


Shooting the Bird of Paradise

by Roseus



Category: Boruto: Naruto Next Generations, Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, Fix-It, M/M, Mystery, Psychological Trauma, all ninjas are gay i dont make the rules, don't be afraid of the mcd tag this isn't really darkfic i promise, drinking some respect kunoichi juice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-31
Updated: 2020-04-20
Packaged: 2021-02-25 16:49:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 11
Words: 58,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22499344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roseus/pseuds/Roseus
Summary: Everything is perfect in Konoha. Peacetimes and the post-war economic boom have created a new era of unprecedented prosperity and content. Which is why the tragic loss of a child takes everyone by surprise. But the facts aren't adding up, and strange manifestations keep appearing before the Hokage, and maybe he's just going insane, but something constantly on the tip of his tongue is wrong and-Everything is perfect in Konoha.
Relationships: Haruno Sakura/Yamanaka Ino, Uchiha Sasuke/Uzumaki Naruto
Comments: 53
Kudos: 194
Collections: Fics where the writing is chef's kiss





	1. Vacation Day

**Author's Note:**

> The end of Naruto and the beginning of Boruto kinda broke my heart when it happened, even if I knew exactly what was gonna happen. The skeleton plot of this was me venting my frustrations and thus the driving force remains Make Boruto Hurt Less, but a few years down the line I still think it slaps so, (slaps rainbow bandaid over Boruto series) go and be free!

Naruto doesn’t remember what it was, but he woke up with the residue of a good dream in his mind. He burrows further into the blankets, not yet opening his eyes. Nothing can compare to sleeping in after straight weeks of early morning meetings and briefings and paperwork. Shikamaru is the only one who doesn’t roll his eyes when he says being Hokage was a lot of work with an inflection like it had caught him off guard after four years. Even though his job rarely gave him occasion to do much as pick up a kunai, the tiredness still sank bone deep. So his first act of his first day off in who-even-knows how long was to stay in his cocoon of warm, fluffy bedding.

He could tell from the lack of sink in the bed that Hinata was already gone, had probably taken Himawari to the academy and stopped for errands while she was out. He unrepentantly twisted her neatly made side of the comforter into his blanket burrito. Days off were the best.

When he does deign to get up, Naruto rummages through the kitchen for something at least breakfast-adjacent, though it was getting closer to lunch. He settles for instant-miso and leftover rice. He can and has done worse on the cooking front, but it’s a hollow victory when he knows it’s only because Hinata doesn’t buy instant ramen, preferring to make it from scratch. Some habits never die, though, and there’s a cupboard in his office marked ‘financial records’ that’s chock full of the stuff. But here, in his home, he can (must) have a respectable breakfast. His body is a temple.

After breakfast he follows the flood of sunshine out into the yard. It’s typical Fire Country weather, beautiful and sunny and only humid to those who don’t live in it. He can see through a section of the back fence that’s scored through with Boruto’s early attempts at a katon jutsu. The neighborhood are children playing ninja, too young for the academy but already full of energy and ambition. One of their paper shuriken flits through the hole in the fence and with the barest touch of chakra he returns it with triple speed, bopping the oldest of the three, Kenshi, square on the nose.

“H-Hokage-sama!” The youngest, tsuya stammers while the oldest rubs his nose. Their friend, Komori, stands ramrod-straight.

“Mornin’. Who’s winning?” He stoops to meet their gaze through the fence. Tsuya practically levitates.

“Komori, but not for long!” at the same time that she says it, Komori shoves her arm and and Kenshi scrambles over them both.

“Hokage-sama! Show us your ninjutsu!” he demands, and Naruto frowns theatrically.

“ShowusyourninjutsuPLEASE.” Tsuya quickly amends. He smiles, scratching the back of his head. What can it hurt. He straightens and vaults over the fence into the alley, mentally marking an old stump for a target.

“Okay, but I’m only gonna do this once, so watch close!” Giddy, he summons the chakra into the palm of his hand and takes a running start. It feels good to have his chakra flowing after so long stagnating in his body. Somewhere, Kurama’s ear is twitching in his sleep and Naruto is smiling, biting out “rasen-“ before a root catches his foot and he falls flat on his face, half formed rasengan detonating in the dirt. There’s a moment of dead silence, but only for a second before the children weigh the consequences and bust out laughing anyways. He scrambles to his feet, shouting “what’s funny, you brats?!” and they scatter, still giggling. Yes, he is the great and powerful nanadaime hokage.

After a lifetime of trying to get Konoha to acknowledge him, of smiling even when words cut close to the bone, of pouring everything into protecting the leaf village, these days respect isn’t hard to find. The Fourth Shinobi World War showed just about everyone what was in his heart, and they have faith in him because of it. More uncommonly available are the lines of connection between people. Aside from his precious people and close comrades, no one teases him or jokes with him. The clan heads bow to him when they pass, and he finds himself thinking about how this is exactly what he wanted as a kid, and he kind of wishes they wouldn’t. But he’s working on it. Kids are the easiest to convince that he’s human.

The sun is directly overhead, and he wonders for half a second what else he should do today before he realizes he’s going to Ichiraku no matter what. Leaves rustle as the wind shifts from the southeast, and—

Chakra.

Like ice water was dumped down his back. He’s no sensor-nin, but suddenly all the warmth is leeching out of the air, and whatever it is must be powerful to register like this. He turns on his heel, sliding his other sandal outwards to lower his center of gravity and squaring his shoulders. What he sees is a masked figure. It stands just over five foot, but he’s known destructive forces to come in smaller packages, he’s no hypocrite. It’s not so much that cold is oozing from it as much as the heat is been stolen right out of the air, but it doesn’t appear to be lifting a finger. It makes no move at all.

The mask is unconventional, an oblong shape clearly taller than the wearer’s head. It’s plain wood, with red details painted on so as to crudely make out what could be a grinning face. The figure has paired it with a tan cloak that hides any other information he could have gleaned.

Naruto’s eyes narrow. “Who are you?”

No response. The only movement it exhibits is the waver of its cloak in the wind.

“Whoever you are, this place is under my protection. I won’t let anyone harm it!” Blood rushes in his ears, and his fists clench at his sides. He shouldn’t be escalating the situation but this is easy, this is right. This actually touches the static at the back of his brain. Besides, every adversary he meets seems to need to get hit a good few times before they listen.

But the figure doesn’t make any move on him. Its shoulders shake with inaudible laughter, causing the mask to rattle in a hollow sound that raises the hair on the back of his neck. And then it’s gone, so fast that for a second he doesn’t even realize he blinked. No gust of leaves, no spiral portal, just gone. Without thinking he runs down the street to the Uchiha house and pounds on the door.

Sakura rips open the door with her hands already glowing green with chakra, and distantly Naruto wonders how often people come to her house instead of the hospital. When she sees him her expression relaxes and then screws up again, and he lifts a hand to his face, wondering what he looks like.

“I know I call you a loudmouth a lot but it’s even worse when you’re quiet.” She says.

“Sorry, Sakura. Just thinkin’”

She purses her lips and practically drags him inside. As she makes tea for them he recounts what he saw; her eyes flicker when he mentions a mask but seem to settle when he describes it.

“It sounds to me like one of your neighborhood kids wanted to see if they could prank the Hokage and then body-flickered away while you got all wound up.”

“Sakura!” She serenely blows on her tea. Now that she’s said it, he knows exactly why he came here and not to the office or the police. Because that’s exactly what it sounds like. Just a kid’s joke at the Hokage’s expense; he should be happy they’re comfortable enough to do it. But he can’t shake the feeling of that cold.

His nose scrunches up. “Something was strange. It’s chakra was like, buruburu and jiwajiwa and then PA! it was gone.” Sakura shakes her head at his shoddy description, but there’s a furrow in her brow just under the strength of a hundred seal, and he remembers again why she’s one of his most important people. Still, after a moment’s consideration she slugs him in the shoulder and tells him to get over it. Dejected and bruised, he sips at his tea.

She’s probably right. He’s just chasing shadows because he’s so wound up from being kept indoors for so long. He can convince himself she’s right because Sakura is always right, even if his mind is less wandering and more sprinting in other directions. It’s nothing in the end. Focus on what’s in front of you.

“Have you heard from Sasuke?” he asks. She smiles tightly.

“I was going to ask you the same thing.”

Naruto sulks. Next time he was really going to thrash that idiot. He says as much. “Man, I’m going to beat the hell out of that idiot for not being here to take care of Sarada.”

Sakura smiles but that crease is back, threatening to jab the strength of a hundred. “He’s doing a lot of good work. And he always did have a one track mind, you know.”

“That’s for sure!” Sasuke, who devoted a good decade of his life to one revenge quest. Sasuke, who had to fight Naruto one last time before he would dispel the Infinite Tsukuyomi. Sasuke, who can’t chew and write at the same time.

It’s the last one he tells Sakura, and she laughs away the crease and answers him with one about sending him shopping for mission supplies, only for him to return hours later with just seal tags, because he was so focused on getting the best. And once they’re talking about Sasuke they could go on forever, and before he knows it Sakura is breaking out the sake and things get fuzzy for a while. He loves Sakura for a lot of reasons, but one of them is definitely their status as fellow Sasuke enthusiasts.

Conversation drifts briefly through work, Sakura tells him about the ongoing studies of nightmares and flashbacks in Shinobi that fought in the fourth world war. Shinobi have never been the most mentally stable, and it’s been kind of taken for granted that this sort of thing was the status quo, but Sakura’s firm on drilling further into it. It’s not like anyone can stop her once she’s made up her mind. Naruto talks in incoherent circles about international relations and then brings the conversation back to ranking Sasuke’s bangs.

The sun has gone down by the time she sends him home with a bag of manjuu and a slap on the back that loosens his ribs. He walks homewards alone, passing in and out of the shadows, feeling warm and content.

Down the street from his home, he spots Hinata. Moonlight crests equally off the top of her head and the white plastic shopping bags she carries in each hand. Naruto grimaces, realizing he must have almost missed dinner; regular for any other day, but not his day off. He rushes to her side and sweeps the bags out of her hands before she can so much as squeak. Grinning wide, he falls into step beside her. Her eyes are downcast and he can’t tell if she’s blushing or pouting.

At home, Boruto is ignoring him again, he’s not sure what for this time around, but Himawari gives him a flying hug that nearly knocks him over. He knows that if she decided to get serious, his sunflower could surpass her brother sooner rather than later. She’s already fairly proficient with her byakugan and makes shadow clones like it’s a game, and that came before any academy training. But mostly she seems content drawing with thick crayons on seal paper, and using her clones to hold tea parties. As quickly as she’d ambushed him she darts off to the living room where her plushies are lined up. Boruto makes a great show of generously agreeing to play with her.

Hinata stands behind the kitchen counter, pulling down an apron from a hook on the wall. Naruto ambles to the kitchen and chats idly at her as she fetches a knife and cutting board, and starts chopping the vegetables she picked up from the market. “I talked to Sakura today. I think I’m going to be getting a request for more research funding soon… She hasn’t heard from Sasuke though.”

He can hear the disappointment tingeing his own voice. Hinata smiles in that gentle way of hers, warm like soft sunlight, true to her name. “I’m sure he’ll be coming home soon.”

She changes the subject to Himawari’s marks, which are good but not perfect, which he’s honestly glad to hear. If she had perfect marks he might have to worry about what kind of pressure she was putting on herself. Boruto is excelling in his training, of course. He’s grateful that everything has more or less worked out for his kids.

When dinner is ready they all sit down together, and both his kids are practically bouncing out of their seats at the chance to actually eat a meal with their dad, even if Boruto is mad at him. Naruto lets him steal some of his chicken and calls it even. Hinata made oyakodon, a surprisingly hearty-bordering-on-unhealthy choice coming from her, but he’ll never turn down good comfort food. He devours it and listens to Boruto complain about his katon jutsu, which he’s determined to learn whether or not he has any affinity for it. Himawari assures him that her big brother can do anything, but somehow it devolves into sibling bickering and before they can make peace Naruto swipes their empty bowls and retreats to the kitchen to do dishes. He can hear Hinata trying to placate them through the wall as he scrubs egg remnants out of a pan.

After dinner he sits on the back porch, reveling in the warm breeze. The air whispers to him of comfort and ease and calls up the faint fuzziness in his skull into an encompassing cloak. As he’s zoning out two small feet swing over the porch beside him, and Boruto’s there, announcing that he’s going to show Naruto his new jutsu.

The familiar hand signs yank his attention to the surface. Snake, ram, monkey, boar, horse, tiger. Boruto’s fireball jutsu doesn’t produce a fireball as much as a flashbang directly in his face. Naruto hopes he wasn’t too attached to his eyebrows, because when the smoke clears they’re long gone, replaced by an impromptu charcoal face-mask. Naruto laughs uproariously, which was apparently the wrong thing to do, because he gets slugged in the shoulder before Boruto vanishes again.

Hinata appears in the door, removing her house slippers and sitting where Boruto had. If she minds the new char in the grass, she doesn’t say. Naruto can’t think of anything in particular to say, so they sit in silence for a while.

Eventually Hinata asks, “how was your day?”

He could mention the masked stranger. But he won’t. Instead he thinks of sleeping in, the neighbor kids, shooting the breeze with Sakura. “Peaceful.” He says.

Which is hard to get used to, he doesn’t say. But he’s so so lucky to have a family and best friends and to live in a time of peace. He knows he is. Someday, the reflexive voice at the back of his head that’s been pushing to fight ever since the war will learn that too, and he’ll be left alone in this life that’s rich and warm like oyakodon. 

In the house, the phone rings. Hinata stands and slips on her house slippers again—even that move has demure grace to it, somehow— and moves inside to take the call. The night sucks his focus away again, and he finds himself swaying back and forth slightly with the breeze, watching the stars until it makes him dizzy. Somewhere out there Sasuke is under the same stars, he thinks. Not even unreachable, just away. He wonder whether Sasuke is thinking about him at all.

His reverie is shattered by a muffled cry from the kitchen, and instantly he body flickers to Hinata’s side. But unlike his instincts demand there’s no enemy, just Hinata holding her mouth, already porcelain skin even paler than usual and tears welling in her pale eyes, rolling over her knuckles.

Naruto tries his best to catch the conversation, but it’s just fragments. She says “Sakura, I-” and instantly that voice in the back of his head burns through the warm blurriness of the evening like paper, telling him to run, telling him to fight and tear and slash. Hinata hangs up and her arms fall limp as she looks at him.

“There was an accident.” He voice cracks, and she grips the counter hard enough to dent it, taking stuttering long breaths in and out. He wants to shake her, ‘cause he needs to know now, right now, but he waits as she looks into his eyes with a gravity he hasn’t seen… for a long time. And she says to him, “Sarada is dead.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't kill me I promise I love Sarada and everything is for the best.


	2. High Waters

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> who's ready to s-s-s-suffer *airhorns*

Naruto doesn’t even say anything. He just runs. Sakura’s house isn’t far, but in the time he does have the thought of the masked figure rises to haunt him, summoning a spectral chill in his bones. There isn’t room to think yet, but the blur of wild poppies on the side of the road is an inescapable red. Her favorite color, her sharingan. The flames of the Hokage robe she wanted to wear one day. He prays, please don’t let there be blood. Sarada Uchiha the talented genin. Sarada Uchiha, phoenix of the Uchiha clan. Sarada Uchiha, a mere child. Sarada Uchiha, Sasuke’s daughter. Pinwheel red eyes. Please don’t let there be blood.

His sandals slide in the dust as he rounds the corner to face Sakura’s house and out front a pair of military police are leaving. He crowds past them even as they move aside in deference. The house is the same as it was this morning. The pictures on the wall smile back at him and every time he catches one with Sarada in it he starts to feel nauseous. Because as much as he’s shoving down any kind of higher cognitive function the fragmented echoes still whisper, you could have saved her. You knew something was wrong today. You lost another one.

Like the pictures behind their glass, Sakura is exactly where she was, sitting hunched over the kitchen table. Her hands are laced in front of her mouth with her elbows supporting her on the table, and she makes no acknowledgement of Naruto’s presence. She isn’t crying. Her eyes are wide and blank.

Naruto pulls out the chair across from her and sits down, and still she doesn’t look up. After a moment she speaks. “She was walking home and she fell in the river. She drowned.” He doesn’t even try to hide the shock on his face. “They recovered her body. I have to start planning the funeral..."

“Stop.” He says, and though he’s reeling himself, he has to be the grounded one, the Hokage others rely on. He has to be that much at least for Sakura. “All that can wait. Just hold on a minute, okay Sakura-chan?” The childhood endearment finally makes her raise her eyes, but there’s nothing of what he was expecting. He’s seen Sakura with a storm barely held back in those eyes, seen her cry until they’re raw, but he looks at those grass green eyes and the slope of her mouth, and there’s nothing there at all. Still, he reaches out and takes her hands that have healed him countless times in his to make a circuit, like he could push strength to her by pure will, and like he can feel it returning twofold.

At that moment Hinata rushes in from the hall, sparing Naruto a look that makes him realize that immediately running off was perhaps not the courteous thing to do to his wife. Her eyes are still red-rimmed, and she immediately goes to Sakura’s side, and Sakura’s letting go of his hands to stiffly return her embrace. Even when she releases her Hinata keeps at least one hand on Sakura’s shoulder in constant contact.

“I’m so sorry,” Hinata repeats. And now where Sakura looked empty she begins to look weary.

“When they found her, her hitai-ate was gone, and a necklace Sasuke gave her before he left. The one’s a disrespect to her honor as a shinobi, the other would break her heart. But I’m just glad her body was still intact” Sakura murmurs. Hinata reflexively withdraws her hand, and before she can try to undo the knee jerk reaction Sakura stands and opens a cupboard, staring blankly at the contents.

Naruto’s head is buzzing like and Aburame clan training ground. Numb, he stands up and addresses them both. “I’ll be right back.”

The military police officers are still hanging around the front of the house, again, probably in deference to the Hokage’s presence. Now that he’s not rushing past them, he can notice their details. One is tall and stooping, with chestnut hair knotted behind her head and missing two finders on her left hand- evidently she hadn’t gotten around to getting them replaced yet, or maybe she was just used to it. The other was a man with slicked back grey hair with diagonal scars crossing the tan skin on the right side of his face. Kaede and Niou, his memory supplies. He asks Kaede in his best impression of a steady Hokage voice what exactly happened. Her face turns upwards to catch the light like an imitation moon as she speaks to him.

“Hokage-sama. The genin’s body was found by a passing civilian about three hours ago on the riverbank by the southeast bridge. The last confirmed sighting of her was by her jounin sensei at the end of their daily training, which leaves a two hour window in which it’s presumed she fell in the river and got caught in an undertow.”

But that just can’t be right. “Sarada’s twelve. She knew how to walk on water.” Kaede dips her head in a motion not unlike a swaying maple tree. “Were there any signs that anything could have caused this?”

Behind Kaede, Niou has the gall to look sympathetic. Kaede delivers to him carefully, “There was no trauma or any sign of a fight found on the body or clothing. The morgue is being guarded at all hours.” The last part seems incongruous until he realizes she’s assuring him that there won’t be foul play in the future- no one will be allowed to steal her eyes and desecrate her body. He sees red like wild poppies, and he feels sick again.

He leaves them without another word. He body flickers up to the highest rooftop in range and looks out over his village, standing on the edge. The mask looms in his mind, its grin becoming taunting. In his head, he calls out to a friend.

_‘Kurama?’_

_‘Huh? What do you want, kid?’_

_‘Looking for somebody. Probably malicious, with weird cold chakra. Do y’think you could help me out?’_

Instantly he feels his pupils contract into slits, fingernails stretching into short claws, and suddenly he can sense hundreds of chakra signatures, and an uncomfortably high number of beads of hatred. In addition his hearing and smell are sharper, animalistic gifts he rarely has time to notice in the heat of battle. _‘Don’t say I never did nothin’ for you.’_ Kurama growls, but it has an edge he’d almost call worried, and he wonders what it takes for enough emotion to leak through that even Kurama is concerned.

He focuses on the chakra ebbing and flowing around him: of the stone of the building, the cool night breeze. Then he begins to do what feels like checking every grain of rice in a pot. Families are asleep in their homes. Merchants in this quarter are closing up shop, though he knows that further afield the market stays open long into the night. Sleepless ninja with unruly chakra flaring up within them are tucked in shadows and perched on branches. The Hyuuga compound is close enough that he can identify Hiashi and Hanabi, bright white like stars. Of course, there’s Sakura, somehow both like enfolding green growth and a magnesium flare and familiar like a home. With her is Hinata, like sunlight through white linen with touches of intense violet at the core. The malice around him is petty, and none of the chakra is cold, so he drops into a sprint across the rooftops, heading east, following the edge of the village in what will eventually be a spiral search pattern.

The Hokage’s office quickly rises out of the urban clutter, and he gives it a wide berth lest he have to explain himself to any ANBU guards. But he does stop in the schoolyard, crouching down on one knee with a hand to the ground, lacing his awareness into the chakra of the earth to further his sensory range. A trick the Tsuchikage taught him once. There’s almost too much information coming as shoes strike the ground on the main street, but he can wholesale check the drumbeats of chakra and say there’s nothing like what he’s looking for. The dormant chakra of civilians provides a gentle base line for the much sharper signature of shinobi, varying fantastically in intensity, color, feel, depth. He can pick out a few—what Shikamaru is doing out this late he can only guess. But none of them are cold and leeching and he retracts his chakra and his hand from the earth.

Running again. Because this is what he is capable of. This is what he can take into his hands and do. He can find this mask bastard and bash the stupid thing in and find out what the hell he did, and now Kurama’s chakra is really searing into his veins, hooking into his muscles. He runs his tongue over fangs and accidentally bites it, leaving the iron taste of blood in his mouth and he stops on a dime in a nondescript greenbelt between clan lands thinking _I have to do this, I have to do this_.

There’s no one awake at all out here. He closes his eyes and listens to it, the hum and lull of an ancient force that never sleeps, but maybe lowers its voice. Even his bare ears can pick up the susurration of the breath of sleepers cloistered all around him. Nothing to do but move on.

Next he stops across the river from the memorial stone. Aside from the overpowering sense of Inuzuka to the north he can sense one chakra signature in the clearing of the memorial, but it isn’t cold and he doesn’t pry. With so few people the natural chakra of the forest becomes pinprick clear to him, moving water carrying energy, the invisibly slow growth of trees, small foraging animals. It only thickens around him as he moves, encumbered by human limbs. He tamps down the fox instinct again and moves on.

Even with the new development the forestation out here is still thick enough that he takes a flying leap and starts tree hopping instead of running. The motion is as easy as breathing, and with the leaves flitting by he lets the rustle of the canopy fade into white noise and focuses on the outer reaches of his chakra-sensing as he approaches the main gate. He’s so in the zone he barely notices the movement above him, and only just catches the windmill kick from a sandal with violet painted toes on his crossed forearms.

Ino stares down at him from a higher branch, and he guesses he should have accounted for the barrier squad. “Naruto?” She says incredulously. Not Hokage-sama, because she’s a comrade, a friend, and certainly not the kind to perform for the sake of authority. She’s dressed in darker, heavier clothes than her usual fashion-forward fare, all business for her position as head of the barrier team. And she’s staring at him with a mix of confusion and predetermined annoyance.

Naruto hedges. “Just looking for someone.”

“Alone? Without any guards? In the middle of the night with the nine tales’ chakra?” He can see her patience grow shorter with every question, and he certainly doesn’t have any answers he’d like to share. However—thinking of how Ino had got the drop on him he realizes that his search pattern is going to be open to holes. He’s only one person. But Ino is one of the best sensor-nin in the village.

Ragged at the edges and desperate to keep moving he plasters on a smile and says, “If I asked you to help me without asking for any details, would you?”

Ino leaps down to crouch beside him. “Well you’re going to have to tell me some details for me to know what I’m looking for.”

Naruto’s smile is almost genuine then. He quickly pushes on while his voice is still steady. “It’s got a really cold chakra signature, you’ll know it when you feel it. About five four, wooden oval mask with red markings.”

Ino huffs at the scant information but moves on. “What’s our search pattern?”

“Ah, since it was just me, clockwise inwards spiral with a radius of a half mile.”

She sputters. “A half mile?”

“Yeah, but if I stretch it that far it means I can’t pay attention to what’s actually around me.”

“Well, what’s your plan?” He blinks. Ino sighs. “Your mission, your point.”

He thinks about it briefly. There’s three viable options: one, he can continue on his spiral and Ino can search the outer districts on her own (though they were mostly commercial and he had no reason to think he would find the figure there). Two, they can run concentric circles in opposing directions to cover the most ground at any one time. Or three, they could stick together and Naruto could expand his range as far as he could, while Ino watched the blind spot.

He tells her this and she snorts, immediately opting for the third. “I’m not leaving you on your own.” She says.

It goes much easier faster like this. He doesn’t have to come to a full stop to really listen like he did before, knowing Ino will keep him from clotheslining himself on a branch. In minutes the Aburame clan lands are flying by beside them, and when he strays carefully from the police station Ino doesn’t say a thing. There’s a long bout of silence before the hospital nearly overwhelms him with all the chakra signatures, but after adjusting himself to the market earlier he can take it. They curve around the inner quarter of the village until they’ve reached the dead center, and there’s no sign of that freezing chakra anywhere. Which can’t be. It has to be here. He has to find it.

“Naruto?” Ino prompts, and there’s concern slipping into her voice because he’s sure his mask is slipping and Ino knows him well enough to know that his silences are usually the calm before one hell of a storm. He’s already turning on his heel, doubling back to the east in a flat out run, and he senses Ino behind him even as he pulls his senses back to himself.

When he reaches the southeast bridge dawn is throwing up ribbons of purple over the cliff edge of the village. Ino is telling him there’s no chakra signatures here but he barely hears her.

“Naruto!”

It’s not Ino’s voice, but Hinata’s. It registers that he has been gone for many hours now, and was not in fact ‘right back’. Trailing her is Sakura, and he does feel bad for forcing her out of the house. Sakura and Naruto lock eyes for a moment, though, and he feels like they’re on the same page somehow. Like they know something that neither of them can put a name to.

He kicks off his sandals and takes a step into the river.

It’s ice cold, of course, but he feels like he’s sleepwalking as he wades past his ankles, his knees. Hinata is yelling for him, but as he glances over his shoulder he sees Sakura’s hand lock on her wrist, keeping her in place. The midnight blue overhead is fading, Purple is threaded through with touches of pink and periwinkle, though you’d be hard pressed to say where one ends and the other begins. With one lurching step he trips over the shelf of the riverbed, swallowed up to his waist, and it knocks the air not only out of him but out of his dormant passenger.

_“Naruto? What are doing?”_ Kurama growls. Naruto sends back vague reassurance and gets a flush of hot chakra in return. The water creeps higher and he thinks of Sarada telling him she wanted to form bonds with as many people as she could, and how that was why she wanted to be Hokage. He thinks of Boruto accidentally letting slip that sometimes she wished that Naruto was her dad instead of Sasuke. He thinks of black hair and black eyes darting around the village, a reminder of what wasn’t so far away after all.

The water passes his head, and he keeps walking. The undertow is vicious, but a touch of chakra sticks his feet to the riverbed as well as it would any other surface. It’s dark like ink below the surface, and he can barely see his hand in front of his face, but, this much. _I have to do at least this much._ He lets the water whirl over him and stretches out his senses the tiniest bit in order to feel the natural chakra of the river. Chakra has memory, after all. In his head he asks, ‘did you know about her?’

No answer, of course. Still, his gut clenches in this alone place, at the unknowing silence of it all. He asks more fervently, ‘did you kill her?’ and almost screams at the returning silence. There is nothing here. For a second it’s so suffocating that it’s almost like the river has no chakra at all. He wishes this river was a water dragon like in an old fairytale so he could beat the living daylights out of it, but he’s not so lucky.

His lungs are burning. Overhead he can see waves of light start to strobe across the water. In one final indulgence, he thinks, ‘do you know about the person with the mask?’

A riptide throws him well and truly off his feet, and up and down get lost as he tries to protect his head. He’s tossed against a jut of rock, and grapples to keep hold of it. And then, in the pure black, there’s a pinpoint of light. Naruto dives for it without even thinking, and once he has a hold of it he’s tumbling, swallowing way too much river water, but with a few quick hand signs he jettisons himself to the surface, quickly stumbling onto the shelf.

And when he’s done gasping and coughing he opens his eyes, and the river is reflecting the sky in one great arc of red. Sunrise has come to Konoha.

Several other things are happening in the scene before him. Ino is gripping Sakura’s hand like a vice. The two officers from before are appearing over the river bank. Hinata is running out into the water towards him, but he has so little energy and he can only do this one thing, so he passes her by with just a touch on the shoulder. His muscles are thoroughly exhausted by now, but he staggers up to Sakura and holds out his right hand in offering: the necklace. A silver chain with a jade pendant—so unsuited to Sarada he could laugh. But she takes it with a faraway look and thanks Naruto in a whisper.

Niou reaches them, assessing Naruto’s soaked clothing and presumably drawing correct conclusions. “That’s dangerous you know” he scolds, but before he can say anything else Ino is saying Sakura’s name and when they look over, Sakura is crying for the first time. At first it’s just silent tears, the kind he remembers her crying in frustration during a tough fight, but it’s like watching something shatter, and eventually she sinks to the ground weeping. Hinata reappears at her side but there’s something sharp about Sakura right now that Naruto reads as ‘do not touch’, and he hangs back.

Kaede seems uncomfortable with the display of emotion, also hanging back. She puts a hand on Naruto’s shoulder and tells him, “we’ll send you home, now” and Naruto nods, grateful for whatever assist they’re offering. Sakura’s crying slows until she’s hunched over staring silently at the earth. Ino gently helps her to her feet and Niou slaps his palm to the ground to summon a black bear with a white crescent across its chest who groggily complains about the hour. It’s as good a mode of transportation as any, he supposes.

Ino boosts Sakura onto the bear’s back while Hinata hovers nervously. He takes a step towards them and Kaede is catching him under his arm before he even realizes he’s stumbled. Seeing this, Hinata redirects her worrying back to her husband.

“Here—let me.” She says to Kaede and slips her arm around his back. He’s passed off from one kunoichi to the other. Hinata delicately brushes away the hair that’s plastered to the front of his face, leading him towards Sakura and the bear summons. He can’t muster up the pride to object, just clambers on behind Sakura and tries not to get anyone too wet. The bear radiates body heat, and for the first time all night he begins to feel drowsy. He concentrates on watching Ino and Hinata and their police escort walk beside them so he doesn’t fall off.

They head straight for his and Hinata’s house. At the front door Naruto slides off the bear mostly of his own volition and waits as Ino, Hinata, and Sakura conference. Hinata insists Sakura stay the night at theirs, which makes sense. Maybe now isn’t the time to be in that empty house, with Sarada staring down from all the pictures on the walls. He’s grateful Hinata thought of it, he thinks sleepily, always, always grateful.

He’s a dead man walking but he waits as Hinata leads Sakura inside like she was a small child and Niou dismisses the bear and Ino tells him with no small amount of threat in her voice to take care of Sakura. He waits until Ino leaves and Kaede leaves and just before Niou leaves he turns to say one final thing. “There’s a good grief counselor operating privately in the Southeast district right now.” He fumbles a card out of his flak jacket. “I’m going to highly suggest his services.”

Naruto takes it. “Anything for Sakura.”

There’s pity in Niou’s smile when he says “For you too, Hokage-sama.”

Naruto gapes. “I’m fine,” he says, dripping with water and swaying on his feet.

“I’m sure, but,” he nods towards the house. “What would your doctor say?”

A shiver goes up Naruto’s spine, and not just because his clothes are freezing in the morning air. Point taken. He nods and Niou flickers away, leaving him to finally enter his home.

After peeling off his clothes and trying not to fall asleep and drown in a hot bath, Naruto falls into a deep and dreamless sleep.

The next day he’s standing in front of a nondescript business complex in the Southeast district, wondering if he could just go home after all. It’s officially his second day of playing Hokage-hooky, three days away from his post total, and he knows that while Shikamaru probably doesn’t give a damn his guard detail undoubtedly knows where he is, if they aren’t watching him right this minute, and thus must also be letting him get away with it. It’s not a good sign. Information spreads fast in a ninja village by virtue of it being a village of ninjas, but he nonetheless makes the mental note to dog the police department about confidentiality. No one should know before Sakura is ready.

He sighs. That’s just the thing—this is what Sakura would tell him to do. But she’s still stiff and empty-eyed, and she can’t drag him there herself, so he’ll do it for her. Walk in, say he’s okay, chat a little, leave.

The counselor’s office is sedately decorated, furnished with a couch and two arm chairs all of carefully matched earth tones. There’s a scroll on the wall but Naruto can’t read the kanji. There’s even a little house plant on the side table of the couch, along with tissues.

The counselor notices he’s looking past him into the room and not actually listening to his greeting and lets Naruto in. the Hokage flops down onto the couch, and as the counselor sits across from him Naruto actually looks at him- He’s about average height, with short dark hair and dressed in dark colors. The only thing saving him from being totally nondescript is the curving scars that line the right side of his face, and an eyepatch on the left. Before he got those he must have heard a lot of ‘do I know you from somewhere?’

The counselor tries again. “Good morning, Naruto. I’m Kuromitsu Tsubasa.” And he didn’t know to be relieved he wasn’t going to be called ‘Hokage-sama’ by this man until it was already said and dealt with. He doesn’t know exactly what the protocol for this situation is. The whole first name basis is a little much though, so he takes it back a step.

“Nice to meet you, Kuromitsu-sensei.” Kuromitsu gives him a benign grin, lacing his hands together. And then for a moment it’s like his eyes lance through Naruto’s soul.

“Why are you here?” there’s depth in the question much deeper than the river that brought him here and he’s already frustrated over what he doesn’t understand.

Naruto’s jaw clenches and he leans forward on instinct. What? He repeats it out loud. “What?”

That grin doesn’t budge an inch. “What brings you here today?” he says like it’s the same question at all in a voice suddenly as passive and nonthreatening as a deer. His instincts are running away with him again, Naruto realizes. Seeing shadows.

“My best friend… her daughter died.” He wrenches out, glaring out from under his hitai-ate. “The police force recommended this place, and I wanted to check it out.” For her and not me, is the strong but silent implication.

Kuromitsu nods. He had stopped grinning the minute Naruto spoke, opting for a neutral good-listener kind of face the blond could never pull off. “How is she doing?” he asks. Naruto bristles at sharing Sakura’s information like that, but…

“I can’t really tell,” he mutters. “Most of the time it’s like she’s… flat. Like she’s not really here. But then, the night after Sarada drowned, I went and got her necklace from the river and she cried like I haven’t seen her cry since she was a kid.”

Kuromitsu looks up. “You went into the river?”

Naruto just nods, looking askance.

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well you must have done it for some reason.”

Naruto growls in frustration. “The necklace… was from my best friend.”

“The girl’s mother,” Kuromitsu intones.

“No, my other best friend. Her father. It was important. I had to get it back. If I didn’t do something I wouldn’t have any way to make it fit in my head at all.”

He can see Kuromitsu’s focus narrow, even before he says anything. It’s a baffling shift between herbivore and predator he seems to pull off with ease. Very measuredly, the counselor says, “It’s always hard to comprehend loss. I imagine it’s doubly so when the dangerous chapter of your life is supposed to be over.”

It’s like he watched Kuromitsu line up the metaphorical arrow, and it flies true, straight through Naruto’s core. There’s static in his ears. He’s sitting straighter than he ever has for a Kage meeting and Kuromitsu sees it and Naruto sees that he sees it and this is the moment in a standoff where you take somebody’s head off, but Kuromitsu just tilts his face in the light a little in a way that makes him look especially harmless and says. “Go home. Come back next week.”

Hinata decides to personally pick up both of her children. And yes, it’s because of Sarada. She needs them both to stay close to her right now, needs their hands in her hands more than anything. It feels like walking on crumbling ground. This wasn’t supposed to happen.

What a thing to think. When people are taken from them, it’s never supposed to happen. It’s just, Sarada was such a kind girl, and Sakura is the strongest kunoichi she’s ever met, barring no one and no matter what anyone says, and she’s been absolutely mutated by this. So Hinata knows where her place is, and it’s beside her children.

She’s there precisely when the Academy lets out. Himawari runs into Hinata’s skirt in that rocketlike way she certainly didn’t get from her mother. Or that smile—She saw her husband in both their children’s smiles. Himawari smiles and shows her a sketch of the teacher she drew when she was supposed to be taking notes, and Hinata can’t even bring herself to scold her. They walk together, swinging their joined hands, all the way up to the training grounds.

Boruto is so surprised to see them that it leaves him open for a smattering of snakes to the face by his teammate. “Mom?!” he cries, when his clothes are snake-free. Hinata giggles.

“We thought we’d walk home with you today. Is that alright?” she says. Boruto looks at Mizuki and his sensei, clearly ready to protest for the sake of his dignity, but then he locks eyes with Himawari, who’s activated her byakugan in silent threat.

“Fiiiiiine,” he says, like a true tween, and she’ll spare him the embarrassment of holding her hand but they do walk side by side all the way home. She lets her eyes pendulum between them, blond on her left, black hair on her right, and her heart is at ease for the moment. At least until Boruto starts talking. “Sarada wasn’t at practice today. Which is dumb cause we’re still not finished with our sparring contest, I don’t care what she says.”

Hinata wilts. She’s already so tired. But she smiles through it and adds, “That reminds me, Sakura is visiting our house for a while. You two know how to be proper hosts, right?” She expects questions, but none come. Children pick strange times to be or not be inquisitive.

Boruto just says, “Whatever. When’s dad get home?” and she replies that he should be home already, which puts a considerable spring in his step. Himawari looks like she’ll believe it when she sees it. But soon enough they’re at the front door, which Boruto practically breaks down yelling for his father and—

Naruto’s not home.

Well, it’s not like this is new. These things happen with the job that he has. Himawari is utterly nonplussed, going off to practice her recorder for breath control training, but Boruto looks briefly crestfallen before he’s full on wrathful. There’s things she wishes she could say to him: Your mother is here too. I’m here too, and you could rely on me if you wanted to. Maybe even look up to me.

These three days have made her macabre. Her connection with Himawari is easy, like family is supposed to be. (But rarely is. She’s on good terms with Hiashi now and she trusts Hanabi when the day comes that she leads the clan, but family was never easy before.) Boruto is different. But that’s all it is, not bad or good, just different.

Before she can spiral any further Sakura’s there, laying a hand on her back. She asks to help with dinner, and Hinata tries to wave it off but she insists. So then they’re together, washing vegetables, heating the stove, and the time passes mechanically with the rhythmic trade of cups and pots and simmering broth. After an hour Naruto does come home, briefly popping his head in the kitchen to say so before he goes to get snubbed by Boruto without knowing why. Predictable mechanics.

Boruto is mad at him again. They literally haven’t even seen each other, what could he have done wrong? Either way both children come when he calls them for dinner, so he figures he has a little room for forgiveness.

It’s not hard to fit another chair at the table, and Sakura ends up sitting next to Himawari. His sunflower tells her about the shuriken jutsu she’s studying, and Sakura listens like she’s never heard of a shuriken in her life. She smiles, and Naruto’s so relieved he wants to cry. Hinata makes eye contact and smiles, and even if they’re never whole again, for a moment they’ll be okay. He smiles and digs into his noodles with vigor.

After dinner he clears the dishes, and Sakura follows him to the kitchen. She offers to help wash up and hey, he’s not going to turn her down. He hands her a glass, but the connection is off, and it slips and crashes to the floor. Hinata calls out to them and He yells back that they’re fine. When he looks back Sakura is crouching down, picking up the first of the shards.

“Sakura, let me do it.” He crouches to her level, and he can see past the pink curtain of her hair, and she’s crying. “Sakura?”

“You don’t have to do that,” she levels, voice low. She’s inscrutable even as he watches her tears hit the white tile floor, plinking against the glittering shards of glass.

Naruto smiles warily. “Of course I do! You’re the guest!”

“No, no, with the necklace too, you keep doing things for me because of Sarada. Stop it!”

He stares. “What?”

She turns her face to him and she is no longer inscrutable, a thousand flavors of anguish and wrath and fear bubbling to the surface. She looks young. Sakura may not always wear her heart on her sleeve, but she’s also always cried easily, especially as a genin. He sees echoes of images of her younger self layered over the present when he sees those tears.

“Naruto,” she honest to god pleads, “Naruto, there’s something wrong with me.”

“That’s not true!” He fires back instantly, even though none of them are doing fantastic right now. There’s something in the way she says it that he knows that she means something deeper. She clutches at his hand and he’s forced to drop the shard he’d picked up to avoid cutting her.

“My daughter died,” she says. She grips his hand until both their knuckles are white from it, and finally looks him in the eyes, for what feels like the first time since the river.

“And I don’t care.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is going up two days earlier than planned bc I'm currently writing chapter four and I feel like I've earned it. So here, take another insufferable dialogue based cliff hanger for the road as a sign of my love.


	3. Your Best Self

Kuromitsu taps his pen against his appointment book. “Are you happy?”

Naruto blinks. “No!”

“Why? Spell it out for me.” Damn this cryptic shrink. The counselor stares at him placidly, seated in the same brown armchair as last time. Naruto has thought about not coming back, but there was just too much to even keep inside himself, and who else could he tell? After a brief grace period his staff was expecting him to be up to speed on his normal duties again, so he didn’t really have time to figure it out for himself. And that’s what this guy was for, right? Figuring him out and fixing it?

“Because Sarada died,” Naruto returns, wincing for a number of reasons as memories rise to the surface. Talking is a lot easier when he’s hitting something.

“Specifically what about it upsets you?”

Naruto feels like this is a trap. Some kind of trick question. Everything Kuromitsu says feels like a trick question, even when he’s not asking questions. It’s hard to convince himself to stick through this and stay sitting on this couch. Maybe next time he’ll sit in one of the arm chairs and Kuromitsu will have to sit on the couch and maybe that will give him some kind of high ground. Belatedly he realizes he just admitted he’s coming back next time.

The Hokage sighs. “Sasuke—her father—is one of my most important people in the whole world.” He says. “So is Sakura, so our kids grew up together.” He stalls there, but Kuromitsu picks up where he left off.

“So you’re grieving as you would for a niece. Is that the level you’re feeling?”

“How would I know?” Naruto bites. But that should be right, shouldn’t it? Sakura may as well be his sister and Sasuke… is Sasuke. A niece. It makes the most sense, if it’s not a perfect fit. He’s silent and his forehead pinches as he tries to wrap his head around it all, and again Kuromitsu cuts him some slack.

“Everyone handles loss differently,” he hums, and that Naruto can understand. His mind flashes to Sakura’s crying face as she gripped his hand, but he shoves it away, focusing on the counselor smiling in front of him. Maybe this is why he sticks around: Kuromitsu’s almost nice sometimes. He can see when Naruto’s about to lose his grip and has always pulled him back, so far. But maybe the counselor is just reeling him in, getting him to let his guard down. As if on cue, Kuromitsu speaks. “But before Sarada died, were you happy?” He sees Naruto’s confusion and tags on “With your life—your job, your house, your family.”

“Yes.” The reply is instantaneous and automatic.

“Hm. Most people have something they’re not satisfied with. You’re even happy going to work?”

“I’m the Hokage,” he says, like it’s a complete answer. Because there’s literally nothing else to say. He’s wanted to be the Hokage since he could talk. If he had been caught in the Infinite Tsukuyomi, his dream would have been to wear the hat, though probably with less paperwork involved.

Kuromitsu tilts his head like he’s studying Naruto for cracks, which is stupid. “To be totally satisfied with your life, you must be very lucky. You’ve done the impossible: achieved a peaceful life. Sarada’s death is a rupture in that perfect life. I’d expect that to be very disturbing.”

This time Naruto is prepared for the words to hit, but it still sucks the wind out of him. He wonders how often these walls get plastered over after emotionally unstable ninja (all of them) react badly to his observations. But he also hates when people talk in circles and obfuscate, so on that level he can at least respect Kuromitsu for going for the jugular. He just wishes it wasn’t something being used against him in particular.

The counselor tags on something that seems like a non-sequitur. “Did you ever seek professional help after the Fourth Shinobi World War?”

Naruto frowns. “No. I won.” Kuromitsu raises an eyebrow at that, reading as quite unimpressed in one of his few shows of negative emotion, or emotion at all.

“Win or lose, war is war. Few people can go through it without being seriously affected.”

Which, that makes sense. Naruto knows that, Sakura sends him research grant applications all the time for the exact effects Kuromitsu is talking about. He remembers talking to her about it that day a week and a half ago, before everything had fallen apart. But it really has nothing to do with him. He’s had nightmares since he was a kid, and the only change in his emotions was the celebrated evening of their highs and lows as he became a true adult. It’s really just normal.

“Do you have any particularly strong memories of the war?” Kuromitsu prods.

He can see so many. The ten tails crushing the allied shinobi headquarters. Zetsu cutting down scores of shinobi. Neji, saying his dying words over Naruto’s shoulder. There’s so many, and his mouth draws tight, stone-faced. Kuromitsu looks at him and sighs, changing tacks.

“How’s Sakura?” he says and Naruto thinks he must be wicked with a senbon because he sure has a knack for precisely targeting weak spots. But it’s also something he genuinely wants to tell the man. He needs a second opinion, for one, but he also just can’t keep her words locked inside himself, even if she is his best friend. He’s out of his depth, and he doesn’t know how to help.

“Sakura… told me something this week.” Naruto says. It’s hard to get the words out, even harder than it normally is in this office. Something inside of him is still pushing to just never talk about it, never make it real, but that would be too close to abandoning a comrade. “She said she doesn’t feel anything about losing Sarada. Or not like, nothing, but like it happened to someone else’s kid, y’know?” He can hear the reach in his own voice, he has no doubt Kuromitsu does as well. Sakura is a good person. Sure, she’s got a short temper, but all she wants to do is help others, and she always was the most considerate of all of team seven. Sakura is full of life and feels all her emotions deeply, which is why he can’t get those words out of his head. _I don’t care._

Naruto had just smiled it off, told her she needed to rest and left her alone as much as possible. He loves Sakura, trusts her with everything, but those words had made his skin crawl. Not out of judgement, because it was Sakura and come what may they would always have each other’s backs first and foremost. It just did.

After a moment, Kuromitsu just nods. “That’s to be expected, really.”

The wave of relief that hits Naruto is more of a tsunami. He fills in the blanks: this is normal. An automatic coping mechanism or something. But most importantly, Sakura is okay.

There’s something wrong with Sakura. She knows this, staring into the long plate glass mirror across the room where Hinata is putting in a pair or ruby red earrings. There is something wrong with her because she’s sitting here in her friends’ home, where they are carefully taking care of her like a rescue animal, and thinking mostly about work, and not her dead daughter.

She focuses her eyes absently on Hinata’s demure smile in the mirror and thinks about the files upon files of shinobi having nightmares of a moon shining bright as daylight, lined with concentric circles and spiked with nine tomoe, and of being bound in the god tree’s roots. Even years after the fact, the various terror inducing mega jutsu of the Fourth War were firmly embedded in the psyche of the ninja world. And really, even with Naruto’s help their mental health funding is not equipped for this shit-

She sees the irony here. Physician, heal thyself.

Sarada was a perfect child. A strong young woman with goals, the talent to achieve them, and a significantly better headspace than her parentage would suggest. Sakura liked being around her, had fun seeing her adventures, and taken for granted that she loved Sarada. But now she’s gone and it feels…

“Um,” Hinata rouses her. “Are you sure you’re okay with babysitting?” She straightens the seam of her dress: midnight blue, in a modest cut with quarter-sleeves. Toned down but not matronly, picture perfect for the young and beautiful mother.

“Of course, go have fun on your date,” Sakura replies with a smile that she’s not really feeling as she remembers Hinata is indeed a perfect mother. She has no right to feel bitter, Hinata is a dear friend and a wonderful person, but it’s a sour taste to see what she’s failed at none the less.

Back in the day Sakura was top kunoichi in their class. She perfected her appearance, mannerisms, into that of a graceful young lady, even when what she really wanted to do was sock someone in the face. She had the right crushes, the right clothes, the right pencils. Then she became a real ninja and suddenly the world was very wide and she felt very small and the pencils didn’t seem to matter that much anymore. A woman’s hair is her pride, her mother told her, and it was one of the first things to go. She became rougher around the edges but also stronger and when she saw someone like Lady Tsunade, who was beautiful but more importantly could punch a crater in the ground, she didn’t really mind. She was strong and she could help the people she cared for.

However after the war things slowly slid in another direction. It’s hard to extinguish the voices you were raised with, and suddenly Naruto and Hinata are getting married and she’s there alone. Ino teases her for not having a date with her arm twined in Sai’s, and it’s like she’s been thrown back years. Ino is to her one of those people who you don’t chose, but end up tied directly to your heart, who can change your whole attitude with a gesture and never even know it. And Sakura won, she got the guy, but whatever reaction she was expecting from Ino never came, approval or acknowledgement or something slipping between her fingers when she thought she got over this as a genin. Suddenly she feels rough.

Sakura was functionally a single mother. And as she was going along she thought she was a damn good single mother, even if Sarada frequently and often reminded her that she thought it was strange and bad that their family was like that. But now Sarada’s gone and it’s been delivered unto her that she was actually a shit mother in disguise, and she has to wonder why she couldn’t have just been like Hinata.

“Where’s Boruto?” Well that snaps her out of her sulk like a flash bomb. Himawari’s dragging her panda plush behind her as she emerges from the hallway to ask the question. Sakura doesn’t have an answer, and she doesn’t immediately hear an answer from Hinata, which is enough to put her into gear. Sakura stands and immediately rushes down the hall, opening and shutting every door for some sign of blonde hair or a black tracksuit. There’s nothing. When she returns to the living room, she can see Hinata out in the backyard through the window. She’s starting to cry. It’s an understandable reaction.

After his appointment with Kuromitsu, Naruto had gone back to the Hokage’s office to finish out the day’s work. He was really, really close to convincing the council that they needed some form of social services that wasn’t ANBU. Though many wards of Konoha had been war orphans who quickly aged out of the system, shinobi life was never going to be a safe occupation, and he couldn’t stand to let other children grow up alone while he was in charge.

He considers his arguments as he walks through the center of town. It’s become a maze these days, with unplanned construction twisting back alleys into main streets into dead ends. It was a feat of urban un-planning that only a shinobi could appreciate, and often you could hear vendors yelling at ninja children as they created elaborate and impossible games of tag. It had briefly gotten so bad that there were still some restricted weapons and equipment stores that had doors on the third or fourth floor, with no stairs. Building codes had not been high on his or Kakashi’s regime priorities, which was an embarrassing mistake in hindsight.

He’s thinking of how to break it to the opposing councilman that ANBU aren’t exactly bastions of emotional stability when he hears a rattle.

He stops dead. He knows that rattle. And there’s someone behind him, just out of the line of sight. Not that he looks back.

The street is filled by the lazy flow of people doing afternoon shopping, catching an early dinner, even coming home from school. Merchants and civilians and off-duty chuunin and jounin pass by him, and he’s not about to unleash Kurama’s chakra in the middle of all these people who know him and create a panic, but as he quickens his pace he knows. He’s being followed.

He turns off into a side street, and for once in his life is glad for petty zoning issues as he bounds up the side of a building to a swordsmith’s, closing the door behind him. The woman at the counter looks up from the sword she’s etching with chakra, and it only takes a second to put the face to a name: Ori Shitakiri. He smiles sheepishly, disarmingly. “Shitakiri-san, is there another exit? I’ve got an angry med-nin on my tail.”

Ori grimaces and indicates to the back, which opens into an old stairwell that he swings down in an instant. Leaving the stairwell, he finds the ground floor contains three shops, and three exits: North, West, and East. He bounces on his feet trying to eenie-meenie-miney-moe it out but loses his patience and heads out the West door in a dead run. He takes two rights, one left, and stops in an alley behind of one of the burger joints that keep springing up everywhere. He doesn’t even get the chance to stretch his senses before he realizes he hasn’t lost it.

He throws on a henge and turns back on the main street, running full out. One right, one left, two rights, a switchback, and he hops a fence for good measure. But the bastard is still there. He’s not looking back but it’s still there. Well, if running away doesn’t work.

In the middle of his sprint he stops on a dime and pivots 180 degrees to come face to face with that mask.

The rasengan is swirling in his hand before he consciously thinks to do it, but as he drives it forward the figure parries perfectly, reversing, and suddenly the tables have turned. Now it’s the mask-bastard who’s the quarry. This end of it is much more frustrating; as much as he knows Konoha like his own heart, his own heart doesn’t have gentrification issues. It’s a labyrinth, and every second he hesitates to remember the layout is another step the figure gets ahead. Worse, he’s getting confused as he goes. It’s like the streets are warping as he runs, until he’s not even paying attention to anything but the figure in front of him.

But then he gets lucky. The next street they turn onto he does know. In a split second decision he flickers through the hand signs for Fuuton: Toppa even if he’s not that handy with it and aims. He exhales a jet stream that dents the bricks right beside the figure’s head as it ducks out of the way. But it wasn’t a miss, because it forces it to turn into an alleyway—one that Naruto knows to be a dead end.

He hangs a hard left into the alley, and the masked figure is gone.

He stares, head swiveling. His heart is still thundering in his ears. He tries to slow his breathing and analyze where it could have gone—up what wall? Or maybe beneath the earth with a doton jutsu. He borrows just a pinch of the fox’s senses and--

A smaller, delicate hand slowly touches his. His blood freezes at the contact, and at what he’s sensing, and he can’t move, doesn’t dare look by some primal instinct. The hand is so cold, and it lingers for a moment before it withdraws and the spell is broken. He whips around but for the second time in so many minutes there’s no one there. All that remains is the memory of the sense of chakra. Red.

He runs all the way home.

Naruto scares the daylights out of Sakura when he bursts through the front door. It must be quite a sight to come home to: Hinata is clutching Boruto tight, barely holding back tears. Her best friend looks to her with confusion and she slides to his side.

“Boruto left the house to go to that burger joint without telling anyone.” She murmurs. She doesn’t expect the level of horror in his eyes, but maybe she should. Maybe she’s not empathizing right.

Boruto heard this, of course. “I don’t get why it’s a big deal,” he says. “I’m a genin, I can take care of myself.”

There’s a thick air of discomfort in the room. Hinata looks at Sakura. Sakura looks at Naruto. Naruto looks at Hinata. Naruto and Hinata both look at Sakura, and she can’t take it anymore. All the walking on eggshells, the loaded silences. Naruto’s sideways glances after what she told him. She kneels down in front of Boruto, sitting seiza. “Boruto, would you get your sister for me? I need to talk to you two about something.”

Naruto gapes at her openly. Hinata is as always more discrete, but Sakura can still read the surprise that flicks across her face like a flinch. She smiles back at them in reassurance. She’s fine. It’s the whole problem.

Boruto returns with Himawari in tow, still hanging onto that panda. They peer curiously at her, following her example and sitting on the floor. Sarada’s teammate, and her surrogate little sister. Questioning blue eyes that she adore stare back at her, and she reaches out to gently take their hands. Both of Hima-chan’s fit in one of hers.

“Something bad happened, but it’s going to be okay,” she starts. Boruto looks indignant at the babying, but Himawari grips her fingers tightly. “I want you to know that you’re both safe, and no matter what I’m always here for you.” Himawari changes her mind about sitting and climbs into Sakura’s lap, and she enfolds her, protecting the child as best as she can. “An accident happened to Sarada last week. I’m really sorry but she passed away.”

She can’t see Himawari’s face but she holds her tight as she bawls into Sakura’s shirt. The utter shock in Boruto’s face is heartbreaking, before he shoves his face in his sleeve. “I thought she was on a mission. She’s done those before. I thought…” He stutters. He’s trying to keep his voice under control and failing badly.

“Right now we really want you to be more careful, okay? We know nothing will ever happen to you but we want to have you two nearby.” She feels rather than sees Himawari’s nod, and Boruto removes his face from his sleeve long enough to stare at the plastic takeout bag. Tears roll down his face as Hinata sweeps in.

In the split second between Boruto looking at the bag and Hinata taking both children’s hands, there’s a frame of time that seems to stretch unnaturally long. Just a second, but Boruto looks up and stares Sakura dead in the eyes. His expression is complex but certainly discontent, and the force of it feels like a physical thing, with the room telescoping down to just his stare, pinning her like a butterfly. It feels like static in the back of her brain but she blinks and he’s walking down the hall with his mother, not so much as looking over his shoulder. 

It’s just the two of them now. Sakura looks at Naruto. Naruto looks at Sakura. Sakura looks at the plate glass mirror, speaking to fill the silence. “Sorry, looks like you’ll have to find a new babysitter.”

“What?” Naruto asks, tilting his head in his best impression of a particularly confused dog.

“Hinata was going to take you on a surprise date night. That’s why she’s all dressed up.”

“Oh. I didn’t notice,” he says, and Sakura stands and socks him in the shoulder for that.

“Anyways, I don’t think the kids are going to be comfortable around me for a while, so yeah, sorry for crashing date night.”

“Not at all,” Hinata’s voice sounds from down the hall. She comes back around to the living room, presumably having put the kids to bed. “We could go out as a family instead. What do you think, Naruto?”

He nods. Sakura is struck again by the image of the ideal family they cut. The Hokage and Lady Hyuuga, with their two beautiful and prodigious children. She thinks she’s done imposing on this picture for now. When she tells them she’s going home, Hinata immediately objects but Naruto doesn’t. Not because she’s overstayed her welcome, maybe because of what he knows, certainly because they’ll always be teammates who know each other’s minds better than anyone. And right now she wants to go home.

So she does. She gathers the laundry she’s accumulated, her toothbrush, and the work documents she refused to leave behind, packs them up, and walks back to the Uchiha residence. She looks at Sarada’s picture on the wall, but really. She’s fine.

In the morning Naruto carefully extracts himself from bed without waking Hinata and goes straight to work. His guards are indignant to find he arrived there before them. “I’m leaving early to be with my family,” He explains, pointedly using his Hokage voice. No one objects.

It’s a run of the mill day at the office: He spends his morning officially stamping things he put in his “good for Konoha” pile the previous week, and sending firm replies to everyone who submitted something in the “bad for Konoha” pile. He takes lunch in the hallway with windows that face the academy, recharging his will to fight through office work by listening to the children train and play. In the early afternoon he meets with the council, who he’s making steady progress with on the whole social services thing but on the flip side now they’re up in arms about Sakura’s research funding, which they’re not ever touching, thank you very much. He’d be more frustrated but they’re old and they’re going to die soon anyways.

Shikamaru finally decides to show up to work just about when he’s trying to leave. “Going to the weapons museum and then the burger place,” Naruto says.

“Great place to take children,” Shikamaru snorts.

“Boruto chose it. Boruto chose both of them. Should I be worried about Himawari?”

“Worry later. The Tsuchikage’s got one of our missing-nin and you need to send an extradition request.”

Well, he can knock that out in a half hour or so. But when he looks up from his desk ‘or so’ is two hours and ah, shit.

He sprints out the door and really he’s not even that late yet, he built a buffer period into the schedule because these things happen all the time. When he gets there they’ll have been comfortably wandering the weapons museum for half an hour, tops. Boruto can bash his kneecap or something and he’ll get over it. The pointy objects will probably be very mollifying.

He has to slow down when he hits the early evening rush of the main drag. People call out to him, shinobi and civilian alike, which is still pretty neat. A clan elder passes and bows his head and Naruto reminds himself not to straighten his spine out for him. Patience, says a voice that sounds a lot like Kakashi-sensei. Even as he tries to dodge his way through the crowd, he’s driven giddy by the kaleidoscope of people, his people. Genin running across the rooftop with their Jounin sensei in hot pursuit—he waves to Hanabi but he doesn’t think she sees it. Vendors hocking wares from across the five great nations, no need to thank him for those trade deals. A couple holding hands, picking out flowers.

A flash of black hair falling over a red collar.

He doesn’t realized he’s stopped until someone behind him runs into him. They mumble an apology and he doesn’t even look to wave them off because that was. That looked like.

He weaves through the crowd as fast as he can, landing on the spot where he had seen red and black. There’s no one. Again and again there’s no one. Chasing shadows, getting wound up and turned in circles. White noise that’s always riding the edge of his vision, just out of sight. He stumbles off the main street and into an alley that lets out at the riverbank, breathing hard as he leans against the wood fencing. He stares at his sandals, focusing on the thing in front of him. Shakes his head like it’ll clear out the cottony sensation. Looks over at the mouth of the alley where the parade of citizens marches on. Looks down to the river.

Sarada Uchiha is standing on the Southeast bridge.

She shouldn’t really be disappointed he’s late. It’s nothing compared to the importance of the rest of their life together. Boruto doesn’t understand this, even though Hinata has tried to explain it to him on multiple occasions. But even his little sister gets that sometimes Naruto can’t be around. It’s just hard with both of them looking back at her like that, like they’ve been abandoned.

Boruto stops looking to her for answers and just stares at the display of modified shuriken. They’ve already walked most of the museum, and while Himawari was fairly entertained by the ‘knife yoyo’ and the giant fans, now she was very clearly being a good sport and hanging onto that by an inch. Turning over her wrist, Hinata checks her watch—6:15. She decides to call it.

They walk down the street to the nearest franchise of the Burger place Boruto likes. She buys them all a set, and gets Himawari a cookie for being patient. She immediately breaks it in half and gives the other half to her brother. It makes her think of something from a long time ago.

_“Don’t listen to them. I think your eyes are pretty!” It feels like Sakura’s towering over her from where Hinata’s landed on the ground. From this angle the Hyuuga can see her eyes clearly for the first time; Sakura’s hair was usually what her father would call unruly. Long hanks of pink hair always fell right over her face. Maybe she was hiding. Hinata would understand that, people are scary. She realizes she hasn’t responded._

_“Thank you,” she squeaks. “I was too weak…” she adds, mostly to herself._

_“No way! They think they’re so great cause they’re boys, but they’re the weak ones. Someday I’m going to get really strong, and then I’ll beat them up. And then I’ll get even stronger and no one will ever make us cry again!” Hinata hadn’t noticed, but Sakura is indeed crying. But even when she was afraid, she still chased them away. Hinata thinks she must already be pretty strong._

_Sakura pulls her lunch out of her satchel, and takes out a cookie. She breaks it in half perfectly, and maybe she’s the strongest person ever. Sakura hands her one half and munches on the other. Hinata takes it shyly. She’s not allowed to have sweets at home, except on special days. But with Sakura here, she feels like… maybe she can break a rule._

Hinata’s starting to worry. Both children have fallen asleep in the booth, Himawari leaning into her side and Boruto dozing against the windowpane. They’re emotionally exhausted. Naruto has yet to show. The whole day has been… very not good. He didn’t even send a clone.

Naruto dashes through the door then, and when he opens his mouth Hinata puts a finger to her lips, pointing to the kids. He apologizes in Konoha sign, which she didn’t even know you could do with ninja sign but he gets the point across, and she signs back that they should go home. Naruto throws Boruto over his shoulders like a sack of potatoes, and apparently the boy is out cold because there’s not a peep out of him. Hinata lifts her daughter into her arms and they walk home.

When the children are soundly in bed, there’s a stone of worry in her gut that refuses to go away. She tugs the sleeve of Naruto’s elbow and asks why he was late. His eyes skitter to the side. “Something came up at work. You know how it is.” He smiles. And Naruto… is lying to her.

Naruto is her husband. Naruto is the Nanadaime Hokage. Naruto is the father of her children. Naruto is her childhood crush. Naruto is late again. Naruto is lying to her. For a moment, something in Hinata slips. She slides her arms around his back and looks up at his face. “Naruto. Tell me you love me.”

“I love you,” he says, immediately, automatically.

“Then… why is it—” This is where her rope runs out. She reels on the edge of what she’s doing. Takes a deep breath and exhales. “We have a beautiful family. We have a beautiful life. I wouldn’t ask for anything else,” she says, and he simply agrees.

“Back so soon?” Kuromitsu looks genuinely surprised. Naruto shuffles his feet.

“Think you could fit me in today, sensei?” Naruto asks. The counselor just nods and waves him in. Naruto doesn’t bother to try sitting in the armchair, just goes straight to the couch. He stares at the inscrutable scroll while Kuromitsu gets settled.

“I saw Sarada. Just out on the street. Am I hallucinating? Is this normal?” Naruto’s voice cracks at the end of his sentence. He’s scrambling for purchase. In the moment, he had immediately run for the bridge, but he had blinked and there was no one there. Again.

Kuromitsu says, “That’s not surprising,” and Naruto sags into the cushions. “Is this the first time you’ve had a hallucination or a flashback?”

Naruto stares blankly. Genjutsu doesn’t count, he assumes. So why would he ask that?

The question must show on his face because Kuromitsu continues, “You’ve gone through some serious trauma.” Again, this draws a blank stare from Naruto.

“What trauma?” Naruto says.

“Fire. The death of comrades. Personal betrayal. Warfare.” And the memories are rising, rolling in like a wildfire, so intense that he’s starting to wonder if this is some kind of genjutsu, and it’s like his mind is rebelling against itself. "How do you reconcile that with your current life? Real. Unreal. No one would blame you if the line started to blur." Visions of the past dance in vivid color. It’s like he’s there again on the battlefield again, and then it’s not _like_ he’s there, he _is_ there, he tastes the blood on the air, feels the east wind on his face. He’s pushing through the wall of fighting and dying and living bodies, trying to follow Kuromitsu’s voice back out of whatever this is. The crowd parts, and on a basalt column stands Kuromitsu, in a black cloak dotted with red clouds, and the rinnegan shining in his uncovered eye. Obito leans down and asks him-

“So why don’t you tell yourself the truth?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continuity? I don't know her. Obito looks like that and in that bit of Hinata's backstory Naruto is replaced with Sakura. But also nothing is what it seems and everything has a reason etc etc. Except Sakura having a big case of Gay Childhood, which is exactly what it seems.  
> Have I mentioned this isn't supposed to be a depressing fic? Like I super promise there's going to be laughs and Realizing.....just not for another few chapters.  
> Anyways, I would be absolutely thrilled to know what y'all think is going on. The plot, she thickens.


	4. If Memory Serves

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which it is time to Snap.

The road unspools in front of him in a winding line rolling up from the forestation, just as it winds and disappears behind him, unbroken for a span of many days walk. He has been walking for a long time, even running when he can, and the scenery is growing closer to something familiar. Behemoth trees with twisting bark reach so high into the sky that you can no longer see the tops of them except at a distance, and even their lowest branches would still hang well above most buildings in Konoha. Hence the ground travel: Sasuke’s not planning on breaking his neck falling from a tree after coming this far.

He’s lost track of how long he’s been walking. If he had his rinnegan uncovered he would know the exact numbers, but such a thing would be unbearable. Besides, he needs to keep a low profile. Part of him says it’s been a handful of days, but another is firmly convinced it’s been a short eternity. Patience has never been his strong point. It’s part of what he’s supposed to be learning, he bets, but in this instance it matters far less than getting back to Naruto.

That said, when a roadside tea house comes into view, built organically outwards from the roots of a particularly wide tree trunk, he recognizes he probably still must observe human limits. The minute he’s thinking of food, he knows he carries three millet balls and nothing else, which is annoying. He parts the waterfall of cord noren with one hand and ducks into the room. Someone calls welcome from the back. Shouji line the room, snug against the ceiling but stopping at about his shoulder, letting sweeps of filtered light into the dark wood room. Four chabudai tables with worn but not quite threadbare cushions in various subdued colors occupy the floor. And two travelers, an old man, and a young girl occupy the chabudai.

Only the little girl looks up as he enters, everyone else seems well attuned to minding their own business. That and the old man probably didn’t hear. He sits at the one empty tables, exchanging a few words with the server. The girl is still staring at him. To his horror, she stands up and walks over to him.

“Mister, what happened to your eye?” she asks, and Sasuke realizes that the wind has blown his hair out of his face. His eyepatch must be showing. And here he thought he was passing for civilian—no wonder no one was looking at him.

After a long pause wherein the child doesn’t leave, he says to her, “I had to protect someone. As a consequence it became like this.” It’s not untrue, just spare and definitely misleading. But that’s what you get for asking rude questions. “Where are your parents?”

“Don’t have any,” she replies, and though Sasuke has met so many orphans at this point, it still slips through his defenses. Reminds him of blood on tatami mats and years of living in an effectual ghost town. “Where are you going?”

Again, Sasuke’s heart twists. “I’m trying to go home. It’s very far away.” So much further than he thought at the start, and with so much on the line. He would send a hawk ahead of him if he knew it would do any good.

The girl squints at him. “You don’t look like you’re from far away.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he glares but she just shrugs, unaffected. How irritating. “What’s the furthest place you know of?” he challenges.

“One time we went to my grandma’s house. It took foreeeever to get there. She lived in a forest by a town by some mountains, that way!” The child points West, and as he considers the (very sparse) description he thinks he may have hit upon his first stroke of luck in this whole affair, because he knows where that is.

“Hn. Still further than that.” He says.

“Aaaaauuugh! But that’s like a million miles away!” More like two days light travel. Not far at all, compared to how far he’s already come. To the West, towards Konoha.

“I’m going way further than that… but I think I’ll pass it on the way.” She pouts, and he has a feeling he’s about to do something unparalleled in its stupidity. Something Naruto would do. He touches the palm of his right hand absentmindedly. “Where do you live?” She shrugs. So, nowhere. “Who takes care of you?”

“Nobody!” she exclaims, standing and crossing her arms like it’s an ultimatum. And he sighs, because he knows overcompensation intimately enough to recognize it when he sees it. She’s so familiar and it does him in. It will slow him down, but isn’t this what he’s supposed to be learning?

“If you want… I can take you to your grandmother’s house.” He offers. She stares at him, wide eyed, falling back onto the cushion she was sitting on. Tears well up in her eyes, and Sasuke panics, looking around like someone else will handle this for him. “No, don’t do that. No crying allowed.” He says, trying to impress sternness or reassurance or anything to make it stop into his words. Magically, it does. She aggressively rubs her eyes and stands right back up again.

“Alright! We’re going! Right now!” She runs out of the tea house and Sasuke stares, throws some ryo on the table and takes a parcel of food from the server which has suspiciously already been prepared. Sasuke wonders how long they’ve been waiting to pawn the gremlin off to somebody. He tucks it into his pack and walks calmly to the door before body flickering after her.

The clouds are red and wrathful and the earth is scored with craters, the sounds of steel on steel and steel on bone and revolting human voices barraging him, and then they are not. Naruto blinks and around him is the coffee colored office, staring at Obito’s face, because that is Obito’s face. The floor rises up to meet him and Naruto finds he’s fallen off the couch, clutching at his stomach. He shoves away the memories like he’s twelve again and trying to contain Kurama’s noxious chakra, and focuses on the thing in front of him. Kuromitsu is Obito. Obito is Kuromitsu. Somehow Naruto was blocked from recognizing his ‘counselor’ this whole time. But Obito died for him and Sasuke in the fight against Kaguya. He had shared Naruto’s dream and died with his respect. He’s dead, and supposed to be friendly, and damnit, couldn’t Obito have just become an actor and not a shinobi and saved everyone a whole hell of a lot of trouble?!

It’s too much. Too many uncontrolled variables and Naruto’s really bad at math. He lashes out. “What did you do?!” he rages, feeling fire in his veins as his pupils contract.

“You should really try to avoid using anger as a coping mechanism,” Obito says in his Kuromitsu voice, mild with a suggestion of barbs underneath. He doesn’t smile anymore. The colors bleed together and he’s been chasing ghosts desperately, been pulled apart where the threads are thinnest by senseless chaos, and here at least is a body that won’t disappear. Naruto roars and rumbles and demands to know just what is going on, but Obito doesn’t budge an inch. If anything, he looks disappointed, which Naruto only notices once he already has his fist balled in Obito’s shirt collar.

He looks into Naruto’s eyes, then. “Believe it or not I am still your ally. Unless you want to kill me in cold blood.” The words are like ice, and Naruto’s throat is tight as his chakra simmers down. He lets the not-counselor go and Obito sits in the chair like nothing happened. Naruto backs away a few steps but doesn’t go back to the couch. Obito speaks. “You want to know the truth. But the difference between what’s known what’s real isn’t something I can just give you. You need to give me a truth in exchange that you think is worth just as much. Tell me the things that you’re trying to forget, the things you don’t even admit to knowing. If you do that, then I can show you the full picture. That’s the game.”

“That’s bullshit,” Naruto spits. Typical cryptic riddle bullshit.

“That’s our time,” Obito returns, just as the hour hand passes three. Naruto stares at him incredulously but he smiles a Kuromitsu-smile and promptly kicks him out. Naruto is too shocked to resist.

Sometimes it feels like Sakura is rotting from the inside out. Like an old cherry tree that has given up on even occasionally flowering and has resigned to the inevitable trajectory towards a life as a hollow stump. She bears no fruit, any way you want to take it. She’s tired in a way sleep won’t fix, though she does sleep often, not through any decision of hers. She falls asleep at her desk, at the dinner table, or otherwise just stares outwards and unseeing.

So it comes that she is sitting at the dining table staring at the wall when there’s a knock at the door. She has already taken all the consoling neighbors and sent them away, so there’s a fifty-fifty chance it’s Naruto or Ino, so she expends the effort to get up and cross the house to the entryway. And boy is she lucky she’s not a gambler like her mentor, because Konohamaru is at the door.

He’s carrying a cardboard box. He presents it as the last of Sarada’s effects from the Academy. Despite the withering air she’s projecting, he asks to come in, and Sakura’s tired, not rude. And because she’s not rude she pours him a cup of tea from the kettle that’s still warm. Highly caffeinated, which doesn’t bode well for his overly chipper demeanor. She slides him the cup and sits across from where he’s already made himself comfortable.

“I know it’s been a while, but I wanted to give you my sincerest condolences.” Ah, fuck. “As Sarada’s jounin sensei, I always thought if anything happened I would be there to protect her. I wish more than anything that I had been. It’s awful. I can’t imagine how it is for you.” He says it with such utter conviction it makes her sick. So much like all the others. Sarada was such a good girl. It’s such a shame. You poor, poor thing. “Do you know if Sasuke is coming back to town soon? To support you, and all.”

“Who knows where that deadbeat is,” Sakura says. Konohamaru laughs awkwardly.

“Well that’s no way to talk about your husband,” he says, only really halfway achieving a teasing tone. Sakura just stares at him dispassionately. Konohamaru is starting to sweat.

Her cup is empty, so she stands and walks over to the kitchen counter again. She opens her cupboards just to stare at them, to face away from her daughter’s jounin sensei a little longer. The jars of jam and bottles of spices and even the instant ramen Naruto stores here is organized to a t. The strawberry jam is moldering; she had only ever used it for Sarada’s lunches, neatly cut triangle sandwiches prepared in the early morning before grand rounds.

“Why is this my life?” The words almost surprise her as she says them. But staring at the mini-labels she put on all the little glass spice bottles, she does wonder how she got here. There’s nothing wrong, per se, it’s just as if she walked into her home and all the furniture was rearranged.

Konohamaru nods sagely—it’s an obvious and massive bluff—and says “It’s understandable to feel that way. No one expects the death of their child.” Like she isn’t older and a good deal wiser than him.

“No. That’s the one thing that’s believable. I trained as a shinobi in the leadup to the biggest war the world has ever seen. I fought every step of the way. I became one of the greatest healers in the five great nations and eventually I helped us win that war. How does that become—become this?” She turns her palms outwards towards everything. Fuck humble, Sakura wasn’t waiting around for anyone to recognize her for what she is. She had wanted to become useful, to become strong. And she did. Then they changed the game and that wasn’t what they wanted from her anymore.

She wants to ask how long a flower stays in bloom but the funny thing is she’s pretty sure this is supposed to be the blooming. This is supposed to be her reward: an absentee husband and a dead daughter. And an immaculate spice cabinet.

“I don’t think I get it,” says Konohamaru, and she chuckles softly.

“Just leave already.” And he does. What else is there to do?

Naruto walks home in a fog. There’s really nothing else he can do. He’s the most powerful person in the village and he’s at an absolute loss. Part of him screams to reach out to others; part of him realizes that ‘hey, my therapist gave me a riddle and if I can solve it he’ll tell me why I keep hallucinating, but also he’s the dead ex-akatsuki mastermind’ is a hard sell. At the very least, he needs to go home. Think it through, like a real Hokage.

He turns the key in the lock and he’s not immediately bum rushed by children, so apparently this is one of the few times he’s beat them home. They’ll be happy about that. Walking into the living room, he stretches and his back cracks. He glances in the mirror that runs along the far wall. He stops.

You almost wouldn’t notice it at first. It’s easy to forget what you’re wearing on a given day, but the eyes are a dead giveaway. He looks in the mirror and his eyes are storm-gray, a shade he recognizes from his mother. The rest of his face is unchanged, and for a second he wonders if something’s happening to his eyes, some kind of unexplained and spontaneously developing dojutsu or some seal someone’s put on his vision. Both are ridiculously unlikely, and looking closer he finally realizes that his clothes are not anything he owns. His jacket is rust-red, but he looks down at his hands and sees his regular orange sleeves.

When he looks up, his reflection has changed. It’s not his reflection at all anymore, It’s… Boruto, unmistakably, but older, almost his height, with slashing navy marks up one side of his face, running parallel to a scar across one eye with a strange dojutsu into a gouge on the surface of his hitai-ate, an old-fashioned one he recognizes instantly from carrying it for years. He carries a sword on his hip that Naruto also recognizes as Sasuke’s. Naruto tilts his head and so does reflection-Boruto, he raises his hand and the not-reflection follows.

Naruto scrubs his eyes hard. His children must be practicing genjutstu on him, hiding behind the couch or something and waiting to jump out and surprise him. But then he opens his eyes and sees the masked figure looking back.

He stumbles back, and so does the mask in the mirror. It’s definitely the same mask—wood, with painted streaks of red in that taunting grin. He’s seen it up close enough times to recognize the individual splits and knots in the wood. However there’s only been so many moments when it really held still, and he stares at it now, cautiously approaching the mirror. More tactical ninja would have theories and ways to test them, might be running through ways to snap themselves out of the potential genjutsu, but Naruto doesn’t think that’s what this is anymore. Because the longer he looks the closer the white noise lurking at the back of his brain comes to being actually audible, and the more he feels like his mouth is full of cotton. This is different. This does not belong. Grated by the wash of familiar static, he blinks.

Sasuke. The not-sound falls away as his pulse automatically finds its baseline. Sasuke stares back at him in the glass, looking the same as the day he last left. His hair lays flat to cut an austere line across his face and cover his rinnegan eye, but the other dark eye looks at Naruto in what he can only imagine is a reflection of his own expression, cowed by the nameless injustice that is their constant separation. His chest clenches. But when he raises his hand to grip the fabric over his heart, Sasuke’s reflection doesn’t follow.

Naruto doesn’t dare blink this time but Sasuke does, and in the back of his head Naruto is reminded or the expression ‘eyelashes that cast a shadow.’ The familiar face sends his rationality up in sparks. Sasuke has been away for so long now, and in his absence so much has happened that he needs to know, or that Naruto hasn’t told anyone else but would tell him in an instant. Naruto doesn’t know the exact number of days and it feels like treason, even though he knows he could check the mission files at any time and find out. Sakura, the leading expert on how to love Sasuke, has shown with her actions that the best way to do it is to let him go. Obviously it’s not the same thing to Naruto, but he’s spent probably half his life with Sasuke out of reach, either chasing his back or now waiting less than patiently for his return, even when he’s the one that sent him away. There’s always an unsaid wish hiding deep in his throat that he would just stay. Just for a while.

Sasuke moves his mouth but there’s no sound. Naruto strains to read his lips but he can’t, and really, what kind of jounin is he. Then an arm extends from his black cloak. Reaching out to Naruto, palm up.

Without even thinking Naruto’s hand flies out and slams into glass, fracturing outwards in a spiderweb impact pattern. In the fragments there seems to be one final flicker of black before he’s staring back at himself again, though a thousand little abstractions. A mosaic, like when Himawari pressed glass beads into the soft clay a teacher had brought up from the riverbed. Blood seeps down through the cracks below his palm. It hurts a lot less than some things.

It’s then that Hinata comes running, having heard the crash of glass. “What was-“ she stops when she sees him removing his bleeding hand from the remainder of the mirror. “What—What happened?” He shrugs.

She disappears and reappears with tweezers and a roll of bandages. She holds his hand gently but firmly and starts to pluck out the few glass shards, then winding the gauze around his wrist to anchor it before wrapping his palm. He tries to tell her that she doesn’t need to do that, the cuts are barely anything with his healing factor. She just smiles and says, “Being able to do at least this much for you makes me happy.” She smiles warmly at him and—for a second her appearance flashes. Barely long enough to register wheat-colored hair in a ponytail, clothes that are similar but not the same. He jerks back.

Immediately there’s a question in Hinata’s eyes, and maybe a little hurt. He flounders to cover his reaction as instincts are kicking into overdrive. “I’m going to buy eggs,” he blurts out, and practically sprints out the door.

Hinata stares at the door where Naruto has just disappeared, then at the glass quickly accumulating on the floor, which she will have to clean up. “But I just bought eggs…”

Naruto pounds on the office door, noise disturbance be damned. “Obito! Open up!”

No response. The silence is pervasive, and for the first time he wonders if there’s anyone else working in this business complex. But he also knows he isn’t alone. He leans his forehead against the door and mutters, “I’m ready to play.”

It opens almost immediately, the loss of support causing Naruto to stumble forward. Obito Kuromitsu-smiles at him, and he wonders what that means. The reminder of the superimposed identities slides Obito firmly into uncanny valley territory, but Naruto takes a seat nonetheless.

Obito says, “Again, the rules are, you have to tell me something that you think is worth as much as the truth you’re looking for. If you underestimate that value, I won’t be able to tell you, but you’re free to try as many times as you like.” Straightforward enough, except for the part where half the words coming out of his mouth made no sense. Still, Naruto gets the basic concept: it’s gambling with information. He just had no idea what any of his cards are worth. He has no idea what Obito wants, or how he’s even here for that matter.

Naruto’s not a complicated man, so he just asks. “What does that even mean? What do you want me to say?” Obito Kuromitsu-smiles again and Naruto remembers saying to him, ‘no more masks’ during the final battle, and wonders how deeply that reflex to conceal is embedded. The smile certainly doesn’t reach his eyes.

“To start with, why don’t you tell me about Neji?” It’s only phrased like a question.

Naruto’s grips tightens on his knees. He can practically feel the weight of the fallen body against him, hear Neji’s voice in his ear. He visits this memory more often than he’s ever let on. It’s like Obito’s holding out a dagger, and Naruto is beginning to understand. Blood for blood.

“…Neji was a chuunin from the Hyuuga branch family. I met him during my first chuunin exams, and even though I didn’t know that much about him I couldn’t stand the way he talked about destiny and crap. Later I beat the tar out of him and he finally started to believe that we aren’t just pawns of fate. Even later I learned what his actual story was. He was given the curse seal when he was only three years old, and not long after his father was killed as a concession to keep the peace with kumo, chosen because of the same curse seal. Neji came to hate the main house for compelling him to serve them, and he felt he would only ever be free in death. In the war he sacrificed himself to protect me and Hinata.” Naruto falls into silence.

Obito’s face is clouded over like the moon. He stares at the twitches in Naruto’s facial muscles with a kind of distanced determination. “Something you want to say?”

“He was eighteen! He hadn’t even decided what he was going to do with his life and you killed him!”

“More.” Kuromitsu says.

“What?”

“That’s not good enough. How did he die?”

“Slowly. He took a blunt projectile to the back but it didn’t sever his spine and he died of internal bleeding.” Now they’re exchanging replies like kunai.

“What did he feel?”

“Like a drill carving into his body.”

“Did it hurt?”

“Of course it hurt, didn’t you hear me say his spine was intact!”

“No, did it hurt you?”

It hits him like a punch in the gut. “…of course.”

Obito leans in, just slightly, eyes narrowing. “What _made_ it hurt?”

That he was a friend. That he was only two years older than us. That he trusted me enough to exchange his life for mine. (He must be speaking out loud now, it’s flowing out of him like water from a broken vessel.) Finding his blood on myself long after the fight. Seeing it even longer. (Like water. Water seeping up from in between the floorboards, gushing through the crack of the doorframe, swallowing Obito’s carpet and slowly rising.) That he was only one of many.

“Yes, the others. Shikaku and Ionichi—”

Crushed by the ten tails in the Allied Forces Base. It only took the ten-tails a second to wipe out the whole thing, I don’t even know how many other shinobi were inside. Ino sobbed all night, and no one even saw Shikamaru for hours.

“—And Asuma—”

Vicariously impaled by Hidan. (Water soaking into his pant legs, spilling over the couch cushions.) He was a father, did you know that? His daughter, Mirai, wasn’t even born yet, he never even saw her—

“—The other jinchuuriki—”

“I didn’t even know them! I didn’t even get to meet the only people like me until they were dead!” The water passes his mouth before he can say anymore, and it’s real, Naruto realizes, real enough to drown. He didn’t even get a proper breath of air but it surges up through his hair and above, and they are fully immersed. Him and a ghost, suspended in a psychiatric aquarium. There’s a ding like an oven timer. The water is gone.

Naruto coughs and takes a shuddering breath, staring at his perfectly dry clothes. His eyes flicker to Obito, whose sharingan remains dormant and who otherwise looks completely unmoved.

“Game over.” Obito says, voice devoid of anything. Naruto gapes.

“WHAT?!” Obito better hope no one works here, or maybe Naruto should in case he does something rash, like get really extremely violent with this man.

“It wasn’t enough. Try again later.” He says, and Naruto stands, willing himself not to throw a kyuubi powered fit at the one lead he has in this whole whatever this is. But his blood is on fire.

“If the truth can’t be bought with their lives, then what the hell is it worth?!”

Something does move in Obito’s face then, and he smiles, if you could call it that. Not a Kuromitsu-smile, but a bitter half-smile that makes him seem much older than he is. “You’ll just have to think about it.”

The road winds on before him, and a small head of brown hair winds around him. It’s like having his own personal moon. The child has an apparently unending well of energy; the sun is setting and she’s not only keeping pace with him but finding extraneous activities to keep herself occupied, which is a godsend when it keeps her out of his hair, but more often a curse when it ends up like this. Sasuke catches the back of her shirt as she trips over his feet, again.

“Hey, hey, where are we?” she says. It’s only the fifty-seventh time she’s asked (he’s counting) but for once his reply actually matters. Because if he’s right, they’re just outside of the region where her last living relatives live. Soon Sasuke will be able to hand her off to her grandmother and redouble his pace towards Konoha.

“We should be close. If we can get over this ridge, we’ll be able to see it.” She charges ahead as soon as he says it. He sighs. The towering trees had eventually given way to typical mountain forest, full of steep rocky inclines but ever closer to Fire Country’s typical lush terrain. Still, the road is rough, and he’s not blowing the last of his energy running up a hill.

The girl stops at the top of the hill. She stands still. He can’t see her face, just the outline of her back against the violet sky, but that alone tells Sasuke something is wrong, because she has never once held still in their two days of travel. He runs up the hill.

The ridge is actually a cliff overlooking a rolling green valley. Southwards, he can see the town he remembers being here glowing steadily. More in their immediate vicinity is a massive crater gored into the ground. It’s the last brushstroke Deidara ever put upon the earth. More concerningly, it’s where the girl is staring.

“Mister, where’s the shrine?” she asks, voice quavering. “This—this can’t be it!” Her eyes are wide, full of confusion and panic. She’s looking for the last of her family in that crater. His stomach turns.

Sasuke falls to his knees. Everything feels suddenly very far away, and it’s so cold even through his traveling cloak that he can barely breathe. This was not—no one even chose this location. It’s just where he was. Just for the sake of coming after him, Deidara took out himself and that whole section of land, and no one ever thought to check if it was populated—why would it be populated? Why? Why was it always him other people were dying for, because of? The weight of even one more life on his shoulders is far too much, enough to crush his lungs like glass and turn his limbs to lead and stick a thousand needles down his throat. It’s so cold.

“I’m sorry,” he says. She looks well and truly terrified now, hands gathered instinctively in front of her even as she refuses to move away from Sasuke, like she should. For the briefest second he questions if he should even be going back to Konoha, when grief follows him around like a well fed stray.

“Stop it!” she yells, but all he can do is repeat himself. “Stop it! You said no crying allowed!”

His sharingan has activated and it’s only fitting that he remember this sight forever. One more failure.

He hears himself speak from far away. “I’m sorry, Naruto…”

“Hey.” Despite his bone deep weariness he still manages to whip around into as much of a defensive stance as he can take prone, kunai at the ready. An old woman wearing an apron over a komon and gripping a wood cane. She has a ceremonial looking comb holding up her gray hair, but otherwise Sasuke might mistake her for any grandmother in Konoha. “What exactly is going on—”

“GRANDMA!” The girl launches into the old woman’s apron, bringing everyone to a stop. Sasuke stares.

“Yoshiko?” the woman asks. The girl just holds tighter. Sasuke realizes he should probably have asked for her name before now. It was just, she had been filling the conversational space just fine without him.

Yoshiko’s grandmother turns her gaze on him then, then back to Yoshiko, then back to him but this time as something that could more firmly be categorized as a glare. She draws herself up with the power of steel in her weathered frame. “Who the hell are you?”

All Sasuke can do is turn to stare at the crater. “I thought… it got destroyed,” He says, and it comes out hoarse. He must look terrible right now.

Her eyes soften just a little. “Not at all. That shrine is warded within an inch of its life, including to prying eyes. It may look desolate, but this view is the symbol of our perseverance.” She stamps her cane emphatically.

Sasuke is not going to cry twice. Still, the lift of the crushing weight on his heart feels sweeter than everything short of sleep would. “So that’s how it is…” for the first time in a long time, he smiles. “That’s great.”

When he finally leaves the office, Naruto turns east instead of west. He puts up a henge and skulks through the warren that is downtown. The commercial districts are working at a lackadaisical pace today; the slant of the sunlight is too lazy to work all that hard. The steady crowd noise is still there, and he tries to put it further away from himself as he works outwards towards the river.

He ends up in the same alley as last time. But when he can see around the brick wall, there’s no one on the bridge. He doesn’t know what he was expecting.

Still, he goes to the bridge, constantly glancing over his shoulder, waiting for something to flicker in the corner of his eye. When nothing comes, he crosses it into the East residential district. Here the last of the noise of the city deadens, which he’s sure the Inuzukas are glad for. He passes their main house and wonders if Kiba’s up to anything fun. More and more houses roll by. More than once he’s stopped by the smell of someone’s dinner cooking. He’ll get home eventually, but he’s committed to taking the scenic route at this point.

The sound of a flute carries over the rooftops, a tuneless set of seemingly improvised trills. Naruto blinks. Because the sound is literally coming from over the rooftops. He looks up.

Standing on the roof of a house a few doors down, the masked figure impends on the open sky. It’s holding a child’s recorder up in front of the mask’s approximate mouth. This is the first time he’s seen its hands; they’re smaller and paler than his. Decisive fingers key along the pipe of the recorder, which is sky blue, and familiar. It belongs to Himawari.

His blood is racing, surging with the rage and confusion he’s only just been able to keep locked down all this time. That thing was in his home, near his children. With one hand it holds the recorder away from itself, but the tune continues to play. A leaf floats by on the wind and is sent dancing when it enters the flute’s orbit. Controlling the wind, then. He should be paying attention to those details but he’s really not. He’s thinking about ghosts that refuse to speak to him and grief without answers and holes in stories that close before he can reach them. He’s thinking about things that might be genjutsu but also might not, water and fire and glass and faces. He’s not even thinking so much as seeing his feelings taking the lead and letting it happen. If Obito won’t tell him, he’ll have to get the answers himself.

He lauches into a running leap, watching his feet flip over his head and land soundlessly on the tiled rooftop. Predictably, the figure is gone. The rage stokes up in him a little more, and he thinks he’s lost it again, but two short toots sound from behind him. He turns, and the figure is now three houses away in the opposite direction. No time or use for thinking, Naruto runs, leaping between rooftops, and the thing waits until he’s in the air between the house it stands on and another before it takes off.

As far as cat-and-mouse goes, it’s an even playing field. All they have to work with is the housing grid, making the only options forward, side to side shuffle, backward, or across. Side to side between the back to back houses rarely gains much ground, and across requires jumping over the street. There’s nothing to put between them aside from the occasional chimney. Basically, it’s a flat out race, and the bastard is fast and Naruto is tired. Only whenever he starts to fall out of range, the thing seems to purposefully make a misstep, and he’s back to being within a hair of it. That’s how close it is. At times Naruto could reach out and almost touch the fabric of its billowing cloak.

But why would today be any different than the others? Even as he runs it’s fueled by pure rage and not hope. Even if he can’t catch he has to just chase, but at the same time claws dig into his palms, ready to sink into something. He almost loses it and it falters again. Why is it teasing him? Why is it threatening him? Why why why why WHY

His hand clamps around an arm.

Adrenaline rushes up through him in an unstoppable tide. He yanks the figure backwards, grabbing its arm in a crushing grip. The thing is solid in his hand, and he has it, he caught it. He’s stunned. Apparently so is the masked figure, which is standing still as stone. The senseless fragments and questions from all corners of his life swirl and tear around his mind like a cyclone. Everything started when this figure in the mask appeared to him. Sarada’s death, Sakura’s strange behavior, Obito appearing, and the visions that keep rising before him like vapors. And all of them out of his reach, except for his hand on this one key, and he needs answers, even if he doesn’t know to what.

“Who are you?!” The masked figure is silent, not even breathing audibly. And no, this can’t slip away. The grip on this thing’s arm is what remains of Naruto’s grip on reality, and he’ll be damned if it doesn’t tell him something. “WHAT’S GOING ON?!” Naruto screams through gritted teeth. “WHAT’S HAPPENING TO ME?!” It says nothing, nothing, nothing.

Naruto does something very fast that feels like it happens slow. He reels back and sweeps the figure’s legs. He readies a rasengan in his free right hand, then releases the figure with his left. He diverts his left hand into an open palmed strike that busts open the wooden mask. The momentum of his entire body carries forward his right hand, which he manages to stop just a spare inch away from Boruto’s face.

They stare at each other, locked in place even as the Rasengan spins itself out. Boruto begins to cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know how to write Obito's postwar characterization but honestly who does. This bitch has 20 personalities on top of what I've given him to keep his whole therapist act.   
> Sasuke is here! And that's right, he's suffering just as much as everyone else. And boy are we suffering. But shit has hit the proverbial fan and all the pieces are in place. We are ready to begin. You heard me. Next chapter you get...  
> Fluff.


	5. Anchor Point

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Love Is The Message plays)

Naruto fiddles with the edge of the tablecloth, thumbing a loop of thread at the hemming. Funny how the smallest snags can unravel the whole weave.

“He just wanted my attention. So he dressed up and messed with me to get it.” he says. Hinata looks just as confused as she did when him and Boruto walked through the front door, two notoriously boisterous personalities fallen deadly silent. He stares at the spot where Boruto had been sitting seiza on their living room floor, waiting for his punishment to be announced. In the end Naruto couldn’t even scold him, just sent him to bed early. The memory of Boruto’s wide eyes as he stared down the rasengan weighed too heavy on his mind. Boruto had been terrified of his own father. Naruto would have been too, with the way he had acted. In fact, he was scared of what had come out of him when he had stopped holding back. He was supposed to be the Hokage everyone relied on, stable enough to support the whole village, and he had come so unhinged as to almost…

“Don’t blame yourself.” Hinata says. “With everything that’s happening, of course you can’t always spend time with our children.” That’s right, that’s what they’re talking about. Pardon his lack of focus, part of him is still walking Boruto home in total silence, out of questions and boiling with guilt. In the whole event they had exchanged barely any words, both at a loss at what they had seen. Boruto had walked a careful six feet behind him, even when Naruto slowed down to match his pace. But, the subject at hand. He’s spiraling like an Uzumaki crest.

He thinks back to the first time he saw the mask, in the back street on a serene Friday afternoon. “No, it started before Sarada…” he murmurs. He tries to condense what he’s thinking, but he’s always used the most simple and powerful words to talk about emotion, usually with Sasuke. But this is complicated, dilute. The images are tied together by a string he comprehends but struggles to articulate. Boruto and Himawari asleep in the booths at that burger joint. Boruto shunning him again when he comes home late. Boruto staring into a lethal orb of chakra, arm probably bruising where Naruto had held it.

“I…could have been a better father,” he manages.

“Don’t say that,” Hinata soothes

“But it’s true.” He could have balanced his work as Hokage with his family that’s supposed to come before everything, the one he’s never had like this before. He could have been there for them, when no one was here for him. Hell, he could’ve taken out the trash more often. He just…didn’t. His only excuse had been that he was protecting them by keeping the village safe, but when the time came the real threat to Boruto had been him. He had no excuse.

“You’ve been there when they really needed you. They have an amazing man for a father.” Hinata places her hand over his. It’s not just that she puts faith in him, she crams it down his throat with gentle kindness. He almost resents it, now.

“But I owe them more than that, don’t I? It can’t be alright for it to feel this…” He struggles with the words again. But Sakura’s panicked face rises in his mind, and for the first time the image is a balm. “Performative,” he finishes.

“No,” Hinata returns with startling firmness. Her brow is tense like she’s executing a particularly focus-consuming jutsu. “You care about them. We have a wonderful family. Everything will be fine if we just stay like this. As long as we’re together it’s fine, isn’t it?”

Naruto draws away in shock, and his hand slips out of hers. He stares at the unusually hard set of her mouth, thinking, and it hits him over the head like the roundhouse kick Ino had almost dropped on him those few days ago.

“No,” he blurts.

Hinata has nothing to say to that, which is good, because he gets up and leaves immediately. His brain is still spinning, but this time spinning cotton into string, and he doesn’t know the static is there until it starts to lessen. He’s also starting to think like a major conspiracy theorist, but it doesn’t bother him. Because things cannot stay how they are.

It’s like a mirror. The reflection is Boruto in the mask, Sarada on the bridge, water and fire and glass and faces. He’s been looking in the mirror and thinking how strange, how wrong it all is. Obsessing over the imperfections in the image. But when he had seen strange reflections in real life, he had done something different. He had looked at his own sleeves.

He’s starting to understand where Obito was steering him. Boruto had unintentionally given him the link: the strange event of the masked figure was the flip side of Boruto’s discontent. One was the reflection of the other. In order to understand the picture in the mirror, you must first look at yourself. And the moment Hinata had suggested they could stay the same, he knew she was wrong, that the way they were is wrong. The foundation of their day to day experience was fundamentally incorrect. But he’s still struggling to pin down how.

Part of him acknowledges he’s running away from the Boruto problem. But it’s all part of the same circle, and he- he’ll come back.

So he wanders. He weaves through the streets and weaves through his thoughts and his natural sense is apparently a compass pointing Southeast because he finds himself in the same alley, again, without even thinking, again. This time when he rounds the corner, Sarada is waiting for him on the bridge. It figures.

He walks down the river bank, stepping onto the wooden planks he’s seen way too often lately. She sits on the red railing, which, even though it doesn’t make sense gives him chest constrictions, so the first thing he says to her is, “You shouldn’t sit up there.”

There’s something sad about the set of her, even as she smiles at him, and she speaks. “I shouldn’t talk to you.”

“I shouldn’t talk to you either. I’m going crazy,” he says. Talking to your delusions is generally not encouraged from what he understands, and maybe he’s close to cracking the code to everything, but he knows he’s just as close to cracking apart.

“Or maybe the rest of the world is,” Sarada mutters, frowning. “You said bonds bind the world.”

“They do. Even chakra is a bond between people, and between nature.”

She looks away from him, silently gazing at the river. Her hair ruffles slightly in the warm wind. “Even between strangers?” she says, something pleading in her voice.

Naruto smiles wide enough that his eyes squint shut, and when he opens them she’s still there. “Sometimes especially between strangers.”

“What do you mean?”

Glowing warmth spreads in his chest. “When Sasuke and I were little kids, we never even talked to each other. Barely knew each other’s names, you know? But every day I would walk home along this river, and every day he would be sitting on the end of the dock.” He closes his eyes and lets the memory light up his consciousness like he’s hanging a paper lantern. “We would glare at each other when I passed him and all that but the minute I turned away I was smiling, and I knew he was too. Because we were the same. And even though we both wanted to reach out and neither of us could, that bond kept us going. More than that, over time it grew into something amazing. But how can I put it… even the most precious people start as strangers.”

When he opens his eyes this time she’s already gone, but he finds he doesn’t mind. She heard what she needed to hear, he expects.

He walks quietly down the river, watching the colored light bounce on the surface of the water as sunset nears. This much looks exactly the same as it did all those years ago, exactly like he was walking home from school back to an empty apartment. But when the dock comes into view, there’s no one sitting on the end of it, and maybe it’s another ghost he’s chasing to add to the list. That inseverable bond.

Bonds. The love between people. His frayed bond with Boruto. Sakura’s evaporating bond with Sarada. Hinata’s bond…

He thinks he knows what’s wrong. More importantly, he knows exactly whose help he needs.

Yamanaka Ino is leaning on the windowsill of her flower shop, wondering what to do about her gay husband. There’s no handbook for this situation. The worst part is that she knows she’s going to have to be the one to break it to him, seeing as no one else in the Five Great Countries ever thought to tell Sai that gay people exist. She knows this because she was there when the Konoha Eleven briefly suspected Kakashi and Naruto were gay (which, duh, but Kakashi’s not a pedophile you idiots) and Sai had diligently checked a ‘reference’ book and reported that “Sometimes after experiencing the same excitement, love can blossom, it says. But nothing between two men…”

And really, she doesn’t know how she got into this situation. Ino is, like, stupid smart. She comes from a family that works in intelligence. Her crush on Sai was just that: a crush, very understandably unrequited. But then suddenly he was interested and she was super available what with all her machinations on Sakura having fallen to pieces the moment that goth ex-terrorist had poked her in the forehead, hey, sexuality is fluid, right? And now she’s wondering if she should have been planning what to do about Sakura’s gay husband, maybe with a knife.

It’s at about this point in her thought process that the Hokage crashes through her front door. Ino is mildly surprised, but Naruto does tend to love a dramatic entrance so what can you do. She’s well and truly floored when he actually opens his mouth.

“Ino! You know everything about love. What’s it supposed to be?”

A moment or two of silence. Ino now has an idea about what to do about her gay husband. And her child who undoubtedly hasn’t gotten the sexuality and gender talk from the Academy, and who she’s not going to be so irresponsible as to assume or suggest anything, but maybe Inojin should know that trans shinobi exist.

“Sit.” She corrals Naruto into a seat at her consultations desk. “Stay.”

Ino runs upstairs and whistles in that way that Kiba hates, aka really fucking loud, and both her nuclear family members quickly stumble out of their rooms and fall into line before her. Inojin’s still holding a scroll, and Sai has a smudge of ink on his cheek. Apple meet tree.

“We’re having a family meeting,” she says, descending the stairs. Inojin is right behind her, with Sai taking up the rear.

“If it’s a family meeting why’s the Hokage here?” Inojin says.

“That’s the first lesson of the night: Hokages can be idiots too.”

“Ah, then he’ll fit right in,” Inojin shoots back, and she has to admire the dedication of taking the self-burn for the greater read. That’s her kid. She files Inojin and Sai next to Naruto on the other side of her desk, and it’s a little cramped but it works. She stares down the ragtag group that is her twelve year old child, her twink husband, and the most politically and physically powerful idiot in a fifty mile radius. They don’t know it yet, but they’ve just been enlisted in Ino’s Love and Gender Bootcamp for Babies.

Sai finally speaks up and asks her what this family meeting is about, which gives her the perfect launching point. She rests her elbows on the table, folds her fingers in front of her mouth, somehow peering down at them despite being at the same level. “Love, is a strange and mysterious creature. It takes many forms, and many people say it’s never the same twice. There’s familial love, love between friends, even love between enemies. But we are here tonight to enlighten all of you on the nature of romantic love.”

Sai sits up with genuine interest. Inojin looks confused and appalled. Naruto looks like he’s powering through embarrassment by focusing so hard he might pull something. She imagines this is not the company he expected to take this conversation in. But for the love of all that is good, they all need it, privacy be damned. This could be some of the most effective emotional communication the leaf village has ever seen.

“Love is abstract and can’t properly be divided and labeled, but for our purposes I’m going to separate it into three easy-to-digest categories: attraction, infatuation, and true blue romantic love.” She feels like an Academy teacher—if she had a blackboard she’d be using it. “Would anyone like to start us off with a definition of attraction?”

Sai, bless him, raises his hand. “That’s when being near a person makes your heart race, right?” Inojin might be considering some violent crimes.

Ino nods sagely. “Good answer. Attraction is a feeling, and it’s hard to describe, so various physical descriptions are attributed to it. Like butterflies in your stomach, or feeling like a magnet is pulling you closer, or just thinking that person is particularly good to look at, or more situationally sexual excitement.” And boy, Inojin is past considering and is probably mentally drawing up the schematics. She doesn’t know what the problem is, they had the talk ages ago. But then Naruto’s going red too, so maybe they’re all just that delicate. Sai remains unphased.

She sighs and eases up on them. “Put a pin in all that, and let’s move on to infatuation.” Wait, she changed her mind about easing up. She wants to go for the kill shot. “You could loosely call infatuation a crush. I had my first crush when I was five. Every day at recess, there was this girl who was always apart from everyone else.” Some days she’s really grateful Sai didn’t grow up with them, this is one. He has no way of knowing who she’s talking about. “And every day, I always noticed her.”

At this point she notices Naruto snickering behind his hand. A blush rises in her cheeks and damnit, be consistently dumb for once. She didn’t think he’d pick up that it was Sakura that quickly. But then he speaks and he actually is exactly that blessedly stupid. “Ino, you’re making it sound like you had a crush on a _girl_.”

Whiplash through the room. Inojin winces because like she said, they’ve already had the talk and she had covered her bases outside cis-hetero sex. Sai looks like he’s piecing together the secrets of the universe. She doesn’t know what she looks like, but guessing from how Naruto goes from slouching to perfect posture with eyes like saucers, it’s nothing short of draconian.

She smiles prettily. “Yes, Naruto. Because I had a crush on a girl.”

Naruto reels, looking back and forth at the faces in the room. “Oh, uh, sorry.” For the first time she considers if living as an orphan with Konoha’s shitty education system meant that no one ever told the kid that gay was okay and all that. Still, she waits. “I just, I thought you really liked guys?”

Jackpot. “I’m bisexual.” She lets it sit.

It’s Sai, bless him, that bites. “What is ‘bisexual’? Is it a kekkei genkai?”

“And now we can take that pin out of attraction. Bisexual means I’m attracted to both men and women, and some hotties from other genders.”

It’s like watching a slot machine line up, 777. ‘That’s me!’ in neon lights above each of their heads. Which in sitting order (Naruto, Sai, Inojin), yes, no sweetie hold on, congratulations baby. She endeavors to set Sai straight first.

“But that and heterosexual—uh, attracted to the opposite gender—aren’t the only options. People can be gay, attracted to the same gender,” she carefully does not look at anyone and makes it sound like that is definitely new information to people other than Sai, “Or might not be attracted to anyone at all. There’s a broad spectrum of ways to feel and not feel attraction, and you can always ask me more later.” Because apparently she’s the only person in Konoha who knows more than two things on the subject. She could’ve sworn Sakura was on the same page as her about this. “The most important thing to know is that all those ways are okay, and plenty of people feel them. They’re not funny or dirty or weird. It’s normal.”

They all look so relieved, even Inojin, who’s heard this song and dance before. In fact, Inojin sits even straighter and—ever daddy’s kid—raises a hand.

“You mentioned people who are other genders. Can you explain that?” And oh she’s been prepared or this moment, has the charts and pamphlets but at this point she knows she’s going to have to wing it. It’s not really a pamphlet situation. So she takes a deep breath and tries to outline gender in the most basic way she can, which in itself seems an oxymoron.

“We’re typically assigned a gender at birth, male or female. However, gender is something more complex than that. Many people end up not actually being the gender they’re assigned at birth. It’s called being transgender, or just trans. This includes being nonbinary, genders not strictly male or female—maybe neither, or both, or something else altogether. Whatever you think describes you.”

“Like Orochimaru,” Naruto pipes up, and she almost fucking socks him for making her child’s first nonbinary role model Orochi-fucking-maru.

Nonetheless, Inojin puffs up, mouth pinching in determination. “Like me,” Inojin says firmly, and Ino breathes a sigh of relief.

“That was really brave Inojin, and I hope you know that I love you.” Inojin nods, red faced now, and Sai takes that cue to take Inojin’s hand and smile. That taken care of for now, she can rejoin to the subject at hand. This is like juggling on fire swords.

“Anyways, back to infatuation. At its worst it’s surface level obsession,” and hello Sasuke days, “but at its best it’s someone you want to be around all the time, who seems like the best or most important thing ever. It’s known to fade with time, but there are no hard and fast rules in the world of love.” She doesn’t even know if they’re listening anymore. Sai has clearly realized the implications of their marriage and looks like he’s been taken by the plague. Inojin’s busy trying not to bounce up and down. Naruto’s—actually paying attention, which is weird.

“But let’s keep this short and get a move on to capital L Love. The big one.” She sits back, pondering how to explain, and as she speaks she absolutely definitely doesn’t think about pink hair and green eyes. “It combines elements of the others- most likely someone you’re attracted to, who you do feel is one of your most important people. You may have a bond that just feels unlike anything you share with anyone else. You chose to stay with them, even when it would be easier to leave. When it’s good it’s like the whole world has fallen into place, and when it hurts it hurts deeper than anything else. But mostly, you’d know it when you feel it.” Her eyes had fallen shut as she lectured, and when she looks Naruto is staring down at his hands.

“Maybe,” he rasps. Then he stands, and in a second he’s gone.

“What was that?” Inojin says as Sai wanders off to contemplate their dilemma. Now her gay husband has to figure out what to do about her gay husband, so there.

“No idea,” she says, hoping she hasn’t done Hinata too dirty. “Inojin, what do you know about pronouns?”

He runs. He never suffers for lack of exercise, these days. He runs across town, back into his neighborhood, to the place he probably should have started at.

Sakura answers the door with only some mild pounding and yelling on his part. When she sees his face she instinctively drops into a more combat-ready stance. It’s not a threat against him but an instant show of solidarity, bone deep reflexes that when one says jump, the other says how high. Naruto knows he must look like something else right now. Sakura sees the danger reflected in his eyes and immediately aligns herself with him against whatever the enemy may be. There are more types of love in this world than Ino can name species of flowers, and he really, really loves Sakura.

Which brings him back to the issue at hand. He can’t be bothered to be particular about his words about this thing he barely understands, letting everything overflow instead. “Everything is messed up! It’s not right! We can’t just do nothing about it!”

Sakura smiles and it has an almost feral edge to it. He can see her muscles loosen, something in her rise to attention in a way that makes her look younger. Not in the fragile way tears did, but like hunger for what the world has to offer, young like on fire.

“Back it up a step, Naruto.” Because yes of course the scent of danger is a hair trigger but he’s not exactly being clear, and he tries to fit it all together because she deserves to know everything, and it’s not going well mentally but he’ll do his damndest.

“aaaaAAAAAH Obito is alive and made me forget him somehow and posed as my therapist!”

“Obito?!” She ricochets between blank shock and confusion, and it’s such a relief to be sharing this weird nightmare with someone else. She’ll have to recover fast—they’ve got ground to cover.

“I saw Sarada on the bridge and my son was pretending to be a ghost and wrong things kept happening—stuff that made me think I was going insane, but Obito will tell me what it all means if I can tell him something really true. I didn’t know what to do for a long time… but I figured it out!”

Sakura doesn’t even ask. She pulls a sword off the wall he thought was ornamental and straps it to her back. “Let’s go.”

They hit the streets. It’s dark now but given the odd hours Naruto has shown up at Obito’s office before, he’s pretty sure he’ll be there. Sure enough, when they arrive, the light in his office is on. Naruto signs that this is the one. Together they cross the threshold, the waiting room, and Naruto stops in front of the door. Briefly his eyes shutter at the task before him. But where he stalls, Sakura busts open the door.

Obito looks up from his tea, eyebrows raising. The surprise is quickly smoothed over into his usual indifferent mask. “Come to play?”

Sakura speaks first, no introductions and no set up necessary. “You want the truth, right? I don’t love my daughter.” The words hit Naruto like a blow, but he stands firm by Sakura’s side. This is why they’re here.

Obito frowns minutely. “Well yeah, I knew that.” Sakura looks stricken, but he takes her hand and hopes he’s right.

Bonds. ‘ _bonds bind the world together_ ,’ Sarada had reminded him. Bonds of love and hatred and every complicated feeling in between. Love that balances power, that balances people with each other. But what if their bonds are twisted somehow, like they’re not where they’re supposed to be? What could even cause such a thing? He needs to know. _For things to stay the way they are, how can you say it’s okay?_

All in.

“It’s bad,” Naruto rumbles, “but my family doesn’t matter to me like they should, either.” He doesn’t know whether to let go of Sakura’s hand. He doesn’t want to. “And I’m in love with her husband.”

He tries to subtly glance over at Sakura’s face, but subtle isn’t really his thing and when she sees him looking she sends him a long-suffering smile and squeezes his hand. His eyes are hot. It’s such a simple thing to say, but the tiny grammatical reorientation between ‘I love him’ and ‘I’m in love with him’ moves mountains. Ino’s gift to him: clarity, piercing like a needle through a lifetime of memories and threading them together into one cohesive tapestry.

Obito looks genuinely shocked, and Naruto pressed ahead while he has that advantage. “From the beginning, the one I wanted by my side was always Sasuke. These feelings, I never understood them. I just couldn’t leave him alone. I called it friendship,” and he remembers the curve of Sasuke’s face at the Valley of the End streaked with a single tear, facing away from Naruto as he asked what he meant by that. His heart twists, because he knows now. “But that was a lie. It’s the reason I cared so much about Sarada: because she was Sasuke’s daughter. It’s the reason I can keep going even though we lost so many people. I love him.”

Simple words. It makes him feel silly that they took so long to find, but he holds his head high. Now that he knows everything is different and exactly the same. He will fight to the death to protect his bond with Sasuke, which is the same. That the great arc of their endless circular chase like the sun loves the moon might actually converge in their lifetime is profoundly different. _When it’s good it’s like the whole world has fallen into place._ Naruto feels newly grounded, like he can feel the earth turning under his feet.

There’s something tight around Obito’s eye, glazed over and far away. He drops his face into his hands, scrubbing his face but also keeping it covered. He starts to chuckle.

“Well, well. Have a seat,” he says.

Sakura squints at him. “You’re really going to tell us the truth?”

“It’s like I told Naruto, I’m still your ally. You just needed to be able to see on your own.” And yeah, that’s some Uchiha sounding nonsense, but whatever. He and Sakura sit side by side on the couch, hands still together. They both have an eagle eye on Obito, whatever he says. But he just closes his eye, removing the eyepatch on his left eye.

His eyes snap open, revealing the mangekyo sharingan and an impossible rinnegan that gleam in the light. “Known, Unknown. Real, Unreal. The lines have started to blur."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "the average fic has three chapters per cliffhanger" factoid is actually a statistical error. Cliffhangers Roseus, who posts over 10,000 cliffhangers each day, is an outlier who should not have been counted. 
> 
> This chapter was wonky when I outlined it and honestly it's still wonky but at least we getta sit in Yamanaka Flowers and have some sweet sweet solidarity hours. 
> 
> you can catch me on tumblr @ flu-shot. Thanks for that kudos bump last chapter, I am full of vanity and you are all wonderful <3


	6. True Stories

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Occam's razor bitches

“Known, Unknown. Real, Unreal. The lines have started to blur.” Obito shifts, resting his head on his hand. He looks somewhere above Naruto and Sakura’s heads, allowing them to look directly at his eyes. Naruto probably would have looked anyways, but Sakura hesitates before studying them closer. One mangekyo sharingan and one rinnegan, and hair that hasn’t been burned white by the Juubi’s chakra. Like his clock had been set back to the beginning of the war. “The difference between dreams, illusions, and reality is troublesome. Ask any genjutsu specialist and they’ll tell you the most effective illusions are the ones where one blends into the other.” Sakura thinks of Kurenai, whose genjutsu were never as flashy as, say, the kind the sharingan create, but were often twice as deadly. “Dreams aren’t so different from reality. They’re a kind of reality of their own. Do you remember the dreams your comrades had in the Infinite Tsukuyomi?”

Naruto squints, rubbing his chin. “Kiba told me he dreamed he was Hokage. Oh, and Hinata dreamed she was with me, and her family was together.”

Sakura stares down at her hands. “Ino always bragged… that her dream came true. Partially. It was that Sasuke and Sai were fighting over her. But what’s that got to do with it?”

“What were you doing while the others were dreaming?” He asks.

“Well, hiding in the Susano’o at first. Then jumping through a bunch of crazy dimensions and beating up Kaguya,” Naruto replies. Obito nods.

“That’s just the thing. Of all its mysterious powers, the rinnegan doesn’t stop the Infinite Tsukuyomi.”

“What the hell does that mean?!” Naruto exclaims.

Obito levels them with a disapproving look, like a schoolteacher expecting better answers. “We were all taken under the genjutsu.”

Naruto squawks in unintelligible denial. “I don’t remember anything like that!”

“Because it never ended,” Obito says, and that shuts Naruto up. “You can’t deny the Konoha we see around us is amazing. You’ve attained peace with the other hidden villages and even the samurai, the economy is booming, the village is filled with happy families. You’ve even achieved our dream of becoming Hokage,” he directs softly to Naruto. “Konoha is _perfect_. Or, someone’s idea of perfect.”

“We’re dreaming,” Sakura breathes. Obito grimaces, but nods.

Naruto bristles. “That doesn’t make any sense! We beat Kaguya, and besides, the Tuskuyomi gave everyone their own ideal dream!”

“And your ideal dream would be nothing like this.” When Obito says it it flips a switch, smoothing over most of his anger. “At the start, that was true. But the Infinite Tsukuyomi is a genjutsu that requires an immense amount of chakra, which both Kaguya and the tree only want to conserve. More effective than letting that precious power branch out into every individual mind is putting them on a circuit. As we’re drained of our chakra, the tree has been merging dreams together, building us a model world to die in. But as more and more people are incorporated, it becomes less like a dream and more like a legitimate dimension, which is less tolerant of the paradoxes that merging the dreams created in the first place. The structure of this world is collapsing. Dream logic conflicts with physical logic, creating total illogic. Cracks start to form, even letting in things from outside this dimension. It doesn’t matter if we’re all going to die soon anyways, but the effects are pretty disturbing.”

“I don’t believe you. We sealed Kaguya away.” Naruto rasps. His face is serious and hurting. But they’re on a time crunch and Obito is not as patient as he once was.

“Stop screwing around. You can’t ignore that order is disappearing from this world. You see ghosts everywhere, including right here.” He points to his own chest. “Since when does Boruto have coldly natured chakra? Not even I know what happened to Sarada. Look at your marriages, look at your lives. I’ve been trying to find a paradox blatant enough that you can see the falsehood, and you have it now. So look in the mirror.”

Naruto’s jaw clenches. “How did you know about Boruto?”

Obito smiles bitterly. “Known, unknown, it doesn’t matter anymore.”

The first thing Sasuke is aware of is the rhythmic drone of cicadas. It must have become summer without him noticing. The second is the fact that he’s on a futon and not the forest floor, which was always a welcome change of pace. The bedding in the shrine is old and smells the way only old cotton can, indecisive between stale and nostalgic. When he opens his eyes he sees how daylight lifts the shadows, making the room weightless, like it was suspended in honey. Still early morning, he would guess. Since he had been more or less declared ‘not a morning person’ by the Sage of the Six Paths himself (because that’s definitely what the yin symbol on his hand meant) he closes his eyes again. Good rest is a sparse resource.

He gets up about a half hour later, folding his bed sheets neatly before wandering out into the main hall. The shrine was a huge snaking dark wood building that also served as a residence. It was significantly stylistically different than the shrines he had seen in his lifetime. There was barely any furniture, for one. The decoration was scarce and eccentric—a wooden mask with red markings stared down at him from near the ceiling. Long, cavernous halls turned into clusters of small personal rooms, as if this place was meant to be populated with a clan or something of similar size. But there didn’t appear to be anyone living here except Yoshiko’s grandmother.

He follows the sound of pots and pans clanging to a broad kitchen with a window over the sink looking out at the garden. The old woman is making a pot of rice over a wood stove. Her gray bun bobs in the steam as she peers into the pot like it will divine the future. When he speaks, she doesn’t startle at all.

He says, “obaa-sama, thank you for your hospitality. I’ll be going now.”

She waves a rice paddle at him. “Oh, stay for breakfast at least. You have a long way to go, don’t you?”

“Yes.” He never told her where he was going. Yoshiko could have told her. He supposes.

They eat breakfast with Yoshiko. She wolfs down the food like a wild animal, in a way that reminds him of Naruto. Funny how it’s never the beautiful things that remind him of Naruto. It’s children eating like they’re feral and villagers’ righteous anger and inexperienced ninja making stupid mistakes, and penetrating sunshine that makes him sweat under all his dark layers. Of course he can’t help but wonder what makes Naruto think of him. If he thinks of him at all. After all, Sasuke has seen what his life looks like now. He’s…no longer Naruto’s most important person.

Yoshiko finishes her breakfast and announces that she’s going exploring. Her grandmother tells her not to go too far but otherwise seems fine with this. It settles uneasy with Sasuke. A child, alone in the forest, could run into any number of dangers. When the kitchen door closes behind Yoshiko he asks, “Is that really alright?”

“Well, this place is at peace again now,” she says dryly, and Sasuke pales. So much blood, not even on directly on his hands, but in many respects he’s the last man standing. There’s no one else left to carry these sins. Grandma studies him carefully.

“Say, before you go, could you help me pick the tomatoes from my garden? My back won’t tolerate it anymore.”

“…of course.”

The garden is a large plot carved out of the forest, tree line pushed back to make room for every manner of vegetable. Many of them are at the peak of their fruition, vines heavy with beans and squash. In the forest so abruptly adjacent to them, sunlight dances through the sea-dark canopy. Grandma takes a hand scythe out from under the porch and uses it to wave him in the direction of the tomatoes. She kneels in front of a patch of cucumbers, trimming away. Sasuke turns to the tomatoes, which are voluptuous in their growth, bright red. Like they were picture book illustrations of tomatoes. The first one he tries to pick pops like an overfilled water balloon in his hand, and he’s sucking the juice off his thumb when the old woman speaks.

“Young man. You seem intelligent.” It’s not a question, but not really a compliment either, just a firm statement. He says thank you anyways. “You know about this world don’t you? You’ve put it together yourself.”

Sasuke’s hand stops where he had been reaching for another fruit, suddenly on alert, ready to fight or flee if necessary. “Mostly.”

She’s not facing him, still paring cucumbers from the vine, but she nods. “Then, you must be intending to leave this world.”

This woman knew far more than he could have expected. She knew more than Sasuke, from what it seemed. He feels like he’s walked the world over looking for this knowledge, but of all places for it to show up in an elderly shrine keeper from the middle of nowhere is beyond absurd. For a second, his fingers flit to his eyepatch, but he leaves it. Call it respect. “Obaa-sama, what is your name?”

She stands, huffing as she goes, hauling up her bones. “I don’t remember anymore. I’ve been too many people. I’m always a grandmother though, so grandma is fine.” She moves to the sugar cane, wiping the scythe on her apron. “You’re powerful.”

He’s sure of what he’d see if he removed his eyepatch now. In her place would be a silhouette of perfect black flecked with not-quite stars. He’s seen it before in passing oddities, thigs not of his ‘real world’ or anything tied to it. Something in between, underneath, outside. And it wasn’t a question, but he still replies. “Yes.”

“Maybe that’s why you’re here,” she muses, “Too much of a danger to mix with anyone else.” His heart drops at the confirmation of what he already knows. This dream is nearly empty. “But you’re trying to make your way back, aren’t you? To someone important.”

Her intuition continues to be startling. “Yes.”

She hums. “Well, good luck with that. You sure don’t have much time.”

“It doesn’t matter.” It comes out terse. He knows he doesn’t have long, he knows it’s not nearly enough to get where he needs to go. But obstacles like ‘impossibility’ never meant anything to him in the past, and he’s not going to start now. Not when Naruto is depending on him.

“Oh?”

He glares. “Obaa-sama, don’t you know too much?”

“Well, I’ve been around a long time.” She leans on her rake casually, like they were sharing the town gossip and not the structure of reality. “I’ve seen many things, been many people. I don’t remember my beginning anymore, or my end. But, known, unknown—it’s the same. You’re a fool for either.”

In the wake of the announcement of Sarada’s death, Team 7 was taking a constructive break from training. Konohamaru had returned to assist at the academy in the interim. On his way in that day he had caught Boruto training on his own and he had dragged him along as punishment. Currently he’s sullenly answering questions about chakra to the students.

It’s free period, but surprisingly Himawari doesn’t cling to Boruto’s side. Konohamaru had offered to read a story and she’s insistently holding out a thick blue picture-book to him. “This one” she says, with no room for disagreement. Uzumaki to the bone, that one. Konohamaru agrees, opening the heavy cover to the first page.

“Once there was a little med-nin. She loved strawberries and collecting shells and her two teammates, even though they were always fighting. Whenever they got hurt she would heal them, and whenever they would fight she would stop them. The three of them were happy as long as they were together.”

He smiles. It reminds him of a lot of genin squads he knows. Strawberries and seashells are water colored around a portrait of a smiling girl with a brown bob and purple clan markings on her cheeks.

“However, there came a great war. First, one of her teammates was kidnapped by an evil and powerful ninja. She was very sad but continued to fight and heal to protect her village. Then one night, the evil ninja came and stole her away as well. On her own she could do nothing but wait and hope. While she was waiting and hoping, the evil ninja sealed a bijuu inside her that would destroy the village if she ever came back.

At last, her final teammate arrived to rescue her! Together they ran away from the evil ninja’s lair, fighting off all the ninja that pursued them. And they didn’t know, but their other teammate followed as well. But just when they were about to return to the village, the brilliant little med-nin figured out this had been the evil ninja’s plan all along!

Between the three of them, they were able to stop the bijuu from being released and beat the pursuing ninja, keeping the village safe. The End.”

Konohamaru wonders if this is the story of a real jinchuuriki. Their stories had become popular after the war. (After Naruto!) He’s about to close the book when he notices Himawari is looking at him. The other kids scattered as soon as he said ‘the end’, but she’s stuck around. “What happened next?” She demands.

“Nothing. That was the end, Hima-chan.” She squints at the nickname. Maybe she’s in a bad mood.

“But there are still pages,” she asserts, and he looks down and she’s right. There’s still a good hunk of pages. Were those there before? Yeah, he just wasn’t paying attention. He turns the page. It’s blank. And the next one, and the one after that. He flips through them impatiently while Himawari continues to pester him. “What happened to her? What happened to her teammates?” He turns a page and he—

Recoils. He snaps the book shut, feeling nauseous and already breaking into a cold sweat.

“Sensei?” Himawari says. She’s not wearing any particular expression, in that capacity children have to be utterly unexpressive. He gives her a rather unconvincing smile. In a shaky voice, he directs everyone to move to afternoon sparring practice. As the children pair up he slips the book on top of a high shelf to dispose of later. He doesn’t know what it is or how it got in the classroom library, but it’s certainly not staying there. More old school Academy teachers might say early exposure to that kind of violence is good for future ninja, but he doesn’t believe that. When he returns, all the students are practicing the standard moves they’re learning.

It was an odd number of kids, and naturally Himawari dragged her brother out to spar. Which would be fine except as he sees her fly by she clearly has her byakugan activated, which is not allowed, and Boruto counters with a… wall of ice? He runs in immediately to stop them.

When he yells, they thankfully actually stop. “Those are dangerous jutsu! You can’t be using them around all these people!” he scolds. He’s caught totally off guard when both of them to start crying.

The tears are strange. Their faces show no emotion, just turn to face him, almost coincidentally dripping water from their eyes. And those eyes are flat, only nominally looking at him. He doesn’t get the chance to say anything.

“Why did she leave?” Boruto says.

“She ruined everything,” Himawari says, and it’s less of a response and more of a continuation.

“It’s no fun without her here,” Boruto adds. Konohamaru doesn’t hear the only sound of warning. Ping. Ping.

Both their mouths move as one. “WHY DID SHE LEAVE US BEHIND?!”

Ice crystals erupt around them.

Hinata’s home alone when the phone rings, an oddity for this hour.

Sakura speaks up from where she’s been silently stewing all this time, calculating. “How long have we been here?” Because the god tree shouldn’t take very long to consume them, and yet… Sakura looks down at her wedding ring. Plenty of time to make mistakes.

Obito exhales, clearly reaching for compassion. “If you added up every conscious memory you have from after the war it wouldn’t even make four days. Everything else is just information fed to your brain by the tree. Your altered appearance is just your mind’s conception of yourself in this context. That’s why I’ve still got this.” He taps under his rinnegan. “Not much time for mirrors in the final battles.”

Sakura laughs, shaking with relief. “I’m a seventeen year old chuunin.” Nobody’s mother and nobody’s wife.

Naruto groans. “And I’m a genin!” Sakura laughs harder at the world’s first genin Hokage. And really, it’s kind of funny.

“And I’m a lesbian!” She adds, really busting up now.

“And I’m bisexual?” Naruto adds, having lost the plot. Her lungs hurt. Usually when she laughs this hard there was some kind of property damage involved. Because if this isn’t funny she’ll have to think about how this fucking ideal dream gave her a husband and a steady job. Effectively told her to sit down and turn away glory, turn away love and self. And okay, we’re moving away from funny and into angry, and the property damage may yet come around.

“Well how the hell do we break out of this bullshit?” she asks very politely, with a smile that feels and she’s sure looks like blood.

Obito nods gravely. “The release is still the same: a rat seal with the rinnegan and the chakra of the nine tailed beasts. Of course, it does nothing from inside the dream. The second problem is Kaguya. We faced her in the dream realm and won, but only because it carried out the fantasy. I doubt it would be that easy in reality.”

“But you’ve got a plan, right?” Naruto asks. She wonders if he’s being an optimist or seeing something she doesn’t. Obito smiles and she knows it’s the second. “No way you would have gone through all the trouble to make me realize if you didn’t,” Naruto adds.

“It’s not a guarantee. But if we had, say, an extra sharingan.” He grins viciously and taps under his eye. “It could perform Izanagi on the rat seal, turning it into reality. And if I lure Kaguya here through Kamui, and she’s in this dimension when the dream collapses…”

“…execution by existential annihilation,” Sakura fills in. It’s brutal. From what she knew about the components involved (not much, but did anyone?) it could work.

“So we need to find Sasuke,” Naruto says, breathless. Obito nods.

“It’s something I think only you can do. With the rinnegan, I doubt Kaguya would leave him anywhere near you. The odds are he’s stashed away in some other dream. We have to be in the exact same place as Sasuke when the last of the dreams consolidate. After that, I have no idea how much time we’ll have.”

“Well, it’s this or nothin’ right?” Naruto says firmly. It makes her smile. Because this is the best side of Naruto, isn’t it? Diving headlong into trouble to save his friends, regardless of the odds. “Besides, I know exactly where he’ll be.”

Hinata doesn’t know what she did wrong. She holds tight to both her children’s hands as she retrieves them from Konohamaru, clueless as to what could have brought this about. Apparently they had just exploded, seemingly from grief. Boruto had used something that could only be described as ice release which was impossible, but more importantly they had both acted out against their teacher. That was not supposed to be something the children she raised could ever do. She wonders what warning signs she missed, what influences she let slip in.

The children are both strange, with unnerving looks and unnatural stillness to them. Maybe it’s time to call a grief counselor. Naruto had never been one for counseling but if it was for the kids she’s sure he would support it. Himawari keeps looking up at her like she’s disappointed, and Hinata is ashamed to say she feels it.

Himwari turns her glare on Boruto. “She’ll be mad,” she says, and Boruto shakes his head like a dog.

“I’m not mad, I’m just confused. We’ll talk about it more at home.” Himawari looks up like she just remembered she’s there. Boruto ignores her completely.

“My head hurts,” he whines. She pets his hair soothingly.

At home she tries to sit them down to have a proper talk but they both squirm out of her grasp and disappear instantly. She sighs, fists clenching. What little control she has over the situation is slipping. Standing in the middle of the living room, she takes deep breaths.

“Mama, now we match.” Himawari’s voice makes her jump. She turns around to see Himawari standing a few feet behind her. The first thing Hinata notices is obviously the mask, an oblong wooden thing with slashing red markings. It’s big compared to the rest of her. She’s standing oddly still, her voice the only sign she hasn’t up and turned to stone. And that voice has a chilled quality to it, even though it’s just Hima-chan’s voice, and the hair on the back of Hinata’s neck stands on end. “Well, I can take mine off. I don’t know if there’d be anything under yours.”

“Himawari? What are you doing?” Hinata asks. Her voice is trembling. She doesn’t want to think about those words, but evidently Himawari isn’t done with this game.

“It’s okay mama, we’re the same. I’m going to grow up without ever asking for a single thing, just like you. I won’t ever want anything they don’t want me to want. We’ll be in the same corner in all the pictures.”

That strangeness in her voice seems to deepen like an undersea trench, stealing the air out of Hinata’s lungs because she doesn’t want to hear it, she doesn’t want to think about it. It physically brings her to her knees and part of her is still lying to herself that it’s so she can look her daughter in the eye but the other part just says she’s lying.

“You don’t need to worry that I’m stronger than you, cause even when they were disappointed in your weakness it’s not like they ever ask us to be strong. What would we be strong for? We’re not the hero, we just help him. We’ll be weak when he needs it. We’ll suffer when he needs it. We’ll only be what he needs.”

Gravity feels crushingly strong, driving her open hands onto the floor. Anguish tears at her chest, her throat. She’s not weak anymore (but does anyone need your strength?) and she’s gotten everything she wanted out of life (was it ever all that much?) and there’s no asking for more. When she looks in the mirror she sees a respectable woman, a good mother, a happy wife. (When you look in the mirror you see a well-kept doll.)

“Yours is so beautiful,” Himawari says with that voice like snapping harp strings, and she reaches out and cradles Hinata’s cheek. Her hand drops away and Hinata touches her own face, and it feels like plastic. “It’s okay if there’s nothing under it if it’s beautiful. It’s even better.” No, no, she scrapes at her face and it peels off a perfect mask like the petal of a rose. No. She reaches for her face again and another mask peels off in her hand, and another after that, and another. They sink into the wood floor like it’s water. She pulls off mask after mask and there’s no sign that she ever had a face at all. “Thoughts, opinions, we don’t need any of them.” Hinata stops trying to peel away, instead desperately holding her face like she could keep it together like that.

“Mama, when am I getting my curse seal?”

The crawling anguish inside her ignites. There’s a hole in the floor. There’s splinters in her knuckles even through the blue chakra of the lion fist. Himawari is staring down at her with scared blue eyes, mask discarded.

“Hima—” But she’s already gone.

Sasuke dreams. To be frank, that shouldn’t be possible in his current dimensional position. But he’s so used to lucid dreaming at this point that he lands on his feet, so to speak. He knows he’s dreaming. It doesn’t stop him from chasing the blond hair that flashes in front of him.

He’s in the in between, he recognizes. There’s nothing but black and what could be stars but could also be bioluminescence. He runs, and his feet strike nothing but he still moves forward, but never fast enough. Everything he thinks echoes in a not-voice, which is unsettling when it’s insisting _always you, I’ve always been chasing you, even when I couldn’t bear to face you. I want to try, I want the chance to know. I’m waiting. I’m humbled. Thank god I am defeated, I am laid low by love._

“Love.” That wasn’t him. It’s a high, young girl’s voice. He does not know who it belongs to.

“Sarada.” He replies, and the name is both familiar and unfamiliar in his mouth. A freestanding flame blooms in the darkness, casting wagging shadows over the face of a young girl with black hair and black eyes that reflect the specks of light floating around them. He does not know her. She is his daughter. Both are true at once. It’s the saying about known unknowns and unknown unknowns, he doesn’t know what he knows, but he knows what he doesn’t know. It doesn’t make any sense to him either. Like things are out of focus, or like looking at a layered genjutsu through the sharingan.

She looks uncertain, worrying her lip. “If it’s for love,” she says, “I don’t know anymore.”

“You can go home,” he says without knowing quite what it means, and Sarada recoils like she does. He remains convinced of it. “You still have a home to go to.”

She stares into the fire, looking torn. Lights flit past like dust motes in the sun. Her face scrunches up behind her glasses as she shakes her head. The fire goes out.

Sasuke wakes up with the sun on his face and a tree at his back. Grandma stands over him, faintly smiling with one eyebrow raised, hands on her hips. And Sasuke, for all the languid warmth in his limbs, is panicking. He lost his grip on the illusion of time in this place, lost his lucidity within the dream. He reaches up and removes his eyepatch, desperate for solid ground.

The first thing he sees is the pitch black of the interior of the god tree. He can see it, but in that place he’s unconscious and bound. For now it’s only a barrier he has to push past to see the projections of thousands of restless minds. There are less and less layers all the time. He sees the garden, and past it into a version where the shrine isn’t here at all, and past that to one where there’s no crater. Like a triple exposed photograph. Now the his sense of time is anchored with the real, and luckily he hasn’t lost that much time at all. When he looks up at Grandma, he sees exactly what he expected: darkness, with motes of light. He hears rather than sees her click her tongue at him.

“That’s an interesting eye you’ve got. No wonder you got kicked out of the main circuit. It’s pointing you in the wrong direction, though.” He can’t see her mouth move, just the looming negative space with its animate pattern. It’s freaking him out. He puts the eyepatch back and she’s just an old woman again, leaning in to study him intently.

“What do you mean?” he asks. She just waves him off and walks back into the shrine. After a moment, Sasuke picks up his basket of tomatoes and follows.

He opens to door to the sound of vegetables being chopped. Grandma has set about cutting the green onion fine. Yoshiko would be back for lunch soon, she assures him, and she wants to make something nice. Sasuke gets stuck stirring batter, and she whacks him with a wooden spoon when he comes too close to overmixing. She takes the bowl from his hands, using the edge of her knife to shuffle the green onions into the mix.

Yoshiko manages to appear the exact second the batter hits oil. She runs to watch it bubble and Grandma pats her on the head. Then she runs back over to Sasuke, clinging to his cloak. She tells him about the squirrels she saw in the forest and the fort she made and Sasuke is truly baffled but tries his best to insert questions at the appropriate moments. Really, she never needed him to keep the conversation moving while they were traveling, and that hasn’t changed. But he does try.

Yoshiko is a little slower eating the scallion pancakes than breakfast. They’re her favorite, she tells him. Apparently she’s the kind to save the best for last. When she’s not looking he passes his last one onto her plate. He’s not that hungry, is all. The minute the pancakes are gone she smiles and disappears again, leaving him to do the dishes. Typical.

Sasuke had to take care of himself from a young age, so he has no scruples about doing household chores like this. But he is short of time. When he puts away the last pan, he immediately thanks Grandma for her kindness, again, and says he’ll be on his way, again. She frowns at him.

“At least finish your tea,” she says, and he doesn’t remember tea but he looks back at the table and a squat black kettle and two earthen cups are set out. He wants to respect his host and be polite, but he also has limited time. He expresses as much and she just returns, “Time, time is relative.” Denied the excuse, he sits to quietly drink his tea.

She sits across from him, arm draped over the back of the chair. “It’s that eye,” she complains, “making you so rigid. You’re stuck on time, but maybe you should think about space. Or better yet, stop thinking altogether. Near, far, now, then, it doesn’t matter. It’s like how much tea you’re drinking.” At first he thinks it’s a jibe against how he’s trying to down the stuff quickly so he can leave, but when he glances down at the cup the level of the tea hasn’t budged a centimeter. He keeps the question in his eyes, not willing to cede ground. “It’s a dream, stupid. It’s not real. You could click your heels three times and be home.” He turns his questioning glare to his shoes, searching for some relevance. “Not your actual—anything. You could do anything to convince yourself that you’re there and not here and you would be. You’re a terrible dreamer.”

That almost makes him want to laugh. If only she knew the depths he had gone to for the sake of dreams. But maybe she does, from the way she says it, the way she studies him through narrowed eyes. Known, unknown.

“Yeah, you’re right. So why are you helping a dreamer as pitiful as me?” He meets her evaluative gaze head on.

She hums. “I don’t know if it’s help. It’s just the truth.”

Yoshiko materializes at the door. “Lies are the worst!” she chirps, then runs away again. Seeing her brings up a question he’s been suppressing from the beginning. He hasn’t removed his eyepatch around Yoshiko. He really can’t know whether she’s human, a dreamed figment, or something else like her ‘grandmother’. He doesn’t think he wants to know.

“Obaa-sama, what happens to you when I wake up?” he carefully asks. Her eyes soften like when he first asked about the shrine. An infinitesimal detail in the rest of her iron composure, but enough to feel an older, wiser compassion taking you in hand.

“I think you’ve been traveling for a week from this place.”

And he has.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No cliffhanger, it's a miracle! I have no idea how this chapter will be received, tbh. And yes, 4 days is based vaguely on the hours of canon content since the canon divergence point. Now that tag is really carrying its weight huh. Congratulations if you called the twist!


	7. The One I Love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> women.....

_“Ne, ne, do you remember when we were nine and old man Tanaka told us running was unladylike—”_

_“And you threw his groceries over the fence? Of course!” It was really stupid. Aside from Hinata, who was an outlier with her non-existent temper and demure sensibility, Ino was the most ‘ladylike’ in their class. She was the pretty one and everyone knew it, most often top kunoichi of their class, a clan heiress with an eye for fashion and makeup and romance who could also kill a man with his own keychain. The Queen Bee. Sakura was really stupid. Of course it was Ino that her heart got stuck on, refusing to budge since the moment the blonde had tied that red ribbon in her hair._

_Ino smiles at her like a cat laying in a patch of sunshine. Sakura’s really lucky that they got to be friends again, after Sasuke. After decisions Sakura had made without fully understanding why. Ino was the best, prettiest, smartest girl in the Academy and that meant Sakura wanted to be just like her, do everything that she did. When Ino ran through old man Tanaka’s yard, Sakura was right behind her. When Ino started practicing her handwriting to look bubbly and cute, so did Sakura. When Ino said she had a crush on Sasuke, well, so did Sakura. When Ino turned away, so did Sakura. And she’d waited, but that’s the way it stayed. Holding hands and braiding hair was traded for elbowing ribs and stomping on toes._

_“Whatcha thinkin’ about?” Ino pouts at the lull in conversation. Like she’s insulted Sakura’s thoughts would go somewhere without her. Only fitting for an actual mind-reader. She tosses her hair in a brilliant slash of white moonlight. Sakura gives her a little smile._

_“When we were rivals.”_

_“Hey, you trying to start a fight or something? I could still take you blow for blow, anytime,” Ino huffs. It’s nice to know that she’s also defensive about that time. Maybe it’s cruel of her but it feeds something in her that the hurt went both ways._

_“When we were only rivals,” and not friends, Sakura doesn’t add._

_“Hmm. We were pretty bad rivals though, huh.” Sakura looks at her, confused. Ino ducks her head and those damn bangs obscure her face. “Even when we were supposed to hate each other we just used it as an excuse to get all up in each other’s space.”_

_She’s not wrong. On its best days their ‘rivalry’ was like a game, and their aggression was just play. Even when Sakura was feeling sorest she managed to wiggle her way to being forehead to forehead with Ino, and if sometimes when she was staring Ino down she remembered the ‘accident’ that had resulted in Naruto getting Sasuke’s first kiss, she could blame the blood rushing to her face on anger. Ino saying it is a level of admission of something Sakura didn’t even think she was conscious of that has her at attention._

_Sakura can’t really blame Ino for looking away when she considers what to say next. Sakura is a chuunin, and a formidable shinobi, but she’s also a seventeen year old girl, sitting next to another seventeen year old girl, trying to maybe say something she’s never said to someone and really meant it like this. All without getting burned._

_“Guess we couldn’t stay away.”_

_Sakura looks up a few seconds after she says it, and Ino’s looking at her, which means now they’re looking at each other. The darkness seems to shut out the rest of the world, wrapping them tight like it was a blanket fort and not open air. Big blue eyes glint intensely, refusing to break eye contact. Whatever she’s looking for, Sakura wants her to see it. Strangely, it’s under the cover of night that she unfolds, dropping all her pretenses. And Ino’s face is so very close, and Sakura thinks she’ll always be the prettiest kunoichi she knows._

_“Your watch is over. Shift change,” Shikamaru drawls, shattering the moment into a million tiny pieces that she will reforge into a weapon to gore him with. They both spring apart, and Sakura has no idea what she’s seen. Her insecurity creeps in immediately, telling her it was a trick of the light, a pause she read wrong. She settles in to sleep, but the hammer of hope in her chest won’t let her._

Sakura and Naruto step out of Obito’s office at the same moment, perfectly in step. They nod to each other. Without a word they take off in opposite directions.

Naruto will probably go home, Sakura imagines. But Sakura’s got a different order of priority here. Naruto took forever to realize it because he’s still such a stupid _boy_ sometimes—she guesses because he’s literally still a teenage boy. And it looked like Obito hadn’t realized it until Naruto dropped it in his lap, which tracks, the man has never been known for his foresight. And there’s probably a reason Obito only went to Naruto, it’s probably safer the fewer people know, but fuck safe. Her whole life was disgustingly safe right now. Love, not pain, not anger, is the thing that anchors you to reality. So she’ll be following love’s lead for now, thank you very much. And it’s leading her right to Yamanaka Flowers.

She has so many memories that were scrubbed over, feelings and reflexes tamped down by that white noise that she can now tear through like it was cobwebs. She’s lucid, and she knows who she had been keeping in her heart as the war raged on, and after four unplanned days of sleeping on it, she doesn’t believe it’s one sided. So forgive her if she’s a little excited, but she’s awake, in love, and seven-fucking-teen, so she runs down the street with bursts of chakra in her feet that bust concrete and swings through the open window of the flower shop. In the moment she hangs in the air, Ino turns, startled from where she was wrapping a bouquet, yelps “Sakura?!” at the same time that Sakura makes eye contact with Sai and yells “Sorry, Sai!”, losing her trajectory midair. She smashes into the bouquet since the other option is Ino, and as an explosion of petals flies up around them, dips her in a long overdue kiss.

About this time Sakura realizes she has not left much of a margin for error. But after a second of pure shock Ino is kissing her back, and wow Ino is really good at kissing, and keeps her hands on Sakura’s face when she finally breaks them apart to say a beautifully simple, “what the fuck?”

Now her hands do leave Sakura’s face, but only to rub her own temples. Sakura imagines her hyper-adept brain must be throwing a fit, and Sakura tries to stop the pain the best way she can: by filling in the gaps. “Infinite Tsukuyomi! None of this is real! It’s only been four days since the god tree!”

“We’re dreaming?”

“Yes!” Sakura actually puts her finger on her nose and points at Ino.

Ino shakes her head like she’s trying to get water out of her ears, and Sakura can imagine how intense the weird static tranquilizer effect must be to a sensor-nin. But then she straightens up and her eyes are clear and laser focused, and Sakura knows she’s broken through it.

The blonde grabs her wrist and they head right back out the door. Sakura tosses one last look at Sai, but the man is trained in emotional deprivation and is pouring himself a cup of coffee. Ino drags her around the corner and then they’re racing like it’s their Academy days again, Ino’s long hair snapping in the wind behind her, Sakura’s bangs coming untucked from her red headband. Sakura doesn’t actually know where they’re going so she’s always about a step behind, but soon enough she sees the river come into view.

The sight of it squeezes her heart. Sarada wasn’t her daughter, but she did care for her for a time. It still weighs heavy on her shoulders. But Ino is potentially the most emotionally competent person in the village, bar being on the floor as it is. After they slide down the embankment and onto the shore, Ino takes both of her hands.

“Listen, I know the optics on this are going to be bad. But it’s going to be fine. Even if I’m wrong I’ve got the world’s best medic to get the water out of my lungs.”

“What?”

“Lucid dreaming.” Ino winks and runs straight into the river.

Sakura is, of course right, behind her. She’s panicking but only kind of because Ino is smart and Ino has a plan. The water is freezing and she trips over the shelf of the riverbed and suddenly they’re floating. The mid-day light leaves the water clear as glass. Her body is adjusting to the cold now, and though the torrent of the river is fierce, a few chakra enforced strokes keep them relatively in place. Ino’s hair is a massive and billowing gold beacon. There are trout swimming past their heads. Ino smiles madly and Sakura tries to ask in sign what she’s doing. Before she can finish the sentence Ino takes a massive inhale.

That backseat panic comes to the front, full force. Sakura opens her mouth in an aborted scream, ready to drag Ino back to the shore if it kills her. But Ino doesn’t choke or bug out or lose consciousness. She gives Sakura a thumbs up and takes hold of her hand.

The pleasant buzz of mental connection zips through their fingertips. _“The easiest way to tell if you’re dreaming is to see if you can breathe when you shouldn’t be able to.”_ Ino thinks at her.

 _“You could have just pinched your nose!”_ Sakura sends back, along with _“you’re crazy!”_ on loop. But the ‘you’re crazy’s get mixed up with some ‘I love you’s and Ino just laughs, totally unimpeded by the water. Without the telepathic link Ino motions ‘come on’ to her, and Sakura takes her hands again, mostly because she wants to be holding hands again but also for reassurance. Ino watches her as she takes a tentative breath. It just feels like she’s breathing air. Because she is. And this is how she realizes Naruto was right from the beginning. Sarada couldn’t have drowned.

Something about it finally makes her laugh, sheer relief probably, and Ino is laughing at her laughing, and Sakura’s laughing at Ino laughing, and Ino sneaks a hand behind her neck and they’re kissing again. Deep in the rolling crystal waters of the Naka river, two girls are in love.

When Naruto returns home Hinata is hanging over a hearty glass of wine. She would have gone for something stronger if she had ever gotten over the taste. She is keeping time as always and she knows that it’s early to be drinking just like she knows he is late. She’s been waiting. She’s always waiting.

Naruto’s eyebrows raise at the combination of her drink and her posture, and an unfamiliar emotion, one she’s rarely had before, flickers like wet tinder. Growing up, anger was something other people had. Everyone in the Hyuuga compound was always so angry, branch house against main house, father against mother, father against her. It was like they ran out and took all her anger for their own. Or just that her father saying he didn’t care if she lived or died had been force enough to snuff it out. She could feel tense or irritated or frustrated but not real anger.

It’s like she’s a child, reaching for her chakra reserves for the first time. The feeling is foreign, but not bad. Anger feels like a fire inside her that’s bigger than she is, both making her bigger and threatening to burn.

“Where were you?” she bites. Naruto’s eyes go wide and he takes a step back. She presses on. “You were supposed to be home an hour ago.”

She does not raise her voice. It would probably be out of her reach to do such a thing even if she wanted to. And she didn’t want to, not ever with the children in the house. Maybe not ever at all, with the instinctive fear that clamped around her throat. But she puts everything fearsome she has in her tone, and this is something she’s never done before. Of all the nights Naruto has come home late, she has never so much as asked why. _I will grow up without asking for a single thing, just like you._

“Sorry, Hinata. Had an after-hours meeting.” Naruto smiles that blessedly bright smile, but it’s tight at the edges. He eyes her over the top of the smile. “Are the kids alright?”

The thought of Himawari, and what counts as ‘alright’ is like ice down her back, stunning her briefly into autopilot. “Of course,” she answers, not at all sure if it’s the case. Before she can decide to take it back, Naruto nods and takes the opening to head to their bedroom.

Hinata is not alright. (But he didn’t ask that.) Hinata tore off her own face seventeen times in a row, just a few hours ago. Her daughter did something to her, genjutsu maybe, maybe, but she looks at the spot on the wall where there used to be a plate glass mirror. Genjutsu is an easy scapegoat. Genjutsu lets her believe she still has her sanity. But whispers of Himawari’s words come back to her like a weed that’s been planted under her skin. They say insane is what they call a woman who doesn’t bow. Weeds are blooming from her skin and her spine is straight.

She follows Naruto to the bedroom and falters when she sees him pulling out clothes to pack. No small part of her panics. He is the cornerstone of the life she’s invested her everything in. If he leaves, everything falls apart, and the ability to lie to herself has been recently and neatly ripped out of her so she can’t deny it’s a real possibility. But a second look and she notices that the bag is a long-unused mission pack, and he’s not just gathering clothing and toiletries, but kunai and scrolls and rations. She has no idea whether this is better or worse.

The confusion throws fuel on the ember of that foreign feeling deep in her throat. “Where are you going?” She demands, and Naruto stares at her openly. It makes her itch to see that expression directed at her. She’s on unsure footing, and not even she knows where she’s going.

“Mission. Shouldn’t be gone that long,” he says, smiling, like she can’t see the ration bars he’s loading into the pack. Lies are a polite request for more lies. She does not want to give them.

“You’re packing for at least a week. How do I know you aren’t leaving me? Or having an affair?” Hinata says. “Tell me, Naruto.”

Naruto looks deeply uncomfortable and Hinata feels gutturally satisfied to see it. He shifts from foot to foot, and shoves his face in his hand. Finally he meets her eyes.

“Because we’re not actually married, for one,” Naruto says.

It’s like a slap to the face. How could he deny—she remembers her wedding dress. The births of their children. Their first kiss in front of the moon. She remembers—static. Drowning in waves and waves of cottony white noise. Static is eating at the edges of her, fit to dissolve.

“Hinata!” she hears from far away. “It’s the Tsukuyomi, It’s a dream!” There’s an awareness that for the second time today, she’s fallen to the floor. She didn’t feel it, too full of pins and needles, but her head is now level with the bed and she leans against it. Everything’s so fuzzy but there’s a thread of something there, woven from Himawari’s words. Naruto is still yelling. “Think of something you love!” She wants to laugh, but as he says it that thread of sharpness is within reach.

A father who abandoned her. A sister who pitied her. A cousin who died. A husband who denied her. A son that never looks at her. A daughter who called her on all of it. Hyuuga Hinata, what do you have? Even her old genin team doesn’t visit anymore. What did they matter when she was living the dream? _It’s the Tsukuyomi, it’s a dream_. Not enough is what it is. And that ember stokes up with those two words unspoken on her tongue: not enough. Forbidden words. Words that threaten to destroy what she claimed was her everything. It is not her everything.

_I am my everything._

_I love myself._

The byakugan tears through the static like it’s paper, and she emerges from its cocoon raging. Naruto casts a silencing jutsu on her scream, and she knows it’s for the best but she also hates it, hates being silenced. She has always been silenced. She roars her way into lucidity and claws at the floorboards to keep herself steady.

Naruto is stunned, wide eyed and backed against the dresser. Still, Naruto is Naruto. When she lets her head hang he reaches out to her, reassuring her the best he can. She slips out of his grasp. “What… happened?” she asks and it comes out flat and rough. And he tells her. Tells her about the god tree and Kaguya, and fifteen years in four days.

“We’re not married,” she says, trying out the thought. It’s not as bad as she thought, now that she’s not flinching away. It hurts, but hurts heal.

“Sorry, Hinata-chan. I kinda already have someone I like.” Such a polite rejection. She smiles grimly at how out of order it all is.

“You’re leaving to undo the Tsukuyomi.” No questions here, just overdue admissions. He nods. “I’m coming with you.”

Naruto balks. “What?! But the kids!” And she does not snap and say she’s his daycare service, but it might be in her eyes from the way he immediately drops it. This is all she has of her dignity and she will carry it forward unswerving.

“Hiashi will be overjoyed to have them.” However he treated Hinata as a child, her father is perfectly ready to spoil Boruto and Himawari silly. The man was in for a rude awakening when he realized they weren’t his. After a moment Naruto nods and offers her a hand up. She takes it, and the way their hands fit together is something new, or maybe just forgotten. Not husband and wife, but comrades. Ninja with mutual affinity for a cause.

A week’s travel puts Sasuke solidly in Fire Country. But he has a feeling that wasn’t Grandma’s parting gift to him. She had wanted him…to stop thinking. Control the dream, not by force, but by simply believing. Not necessarily his normal skillset, but should be easy enough.

Famous last words, he thinks, plummeting into a ravine after trying to step from one side to the other. His only saving grace is that there’s a river at the bottom, and as he climbs back up to the top soaked to the bone, he realizes he doesn’t know if it was there before and decides to count that as a minor success.

He tries again with the sharingan. He’s had very few problems in life he couldn’t solve with the sharingan. This time he doesn’t even make it a foot into the air, and looking down from where he’s managed to catch a stray branch, there is no river. This is a problem he cannot solve with the Sharingan.

As he climbs back up, dry at least, he realizes he’s lost his grip on the timestream again. He’s about to lift his eyepatch when he realizes that that could actually be a good thing. If more time was passing in the dream than in real life, then he had more travel time. And it’s then that he understands what Grandma meant when she said his rinnegan was pointing him in the wrong direction.

On try number three he closes his eyes and imagines a bridge underneath his feet. It works until he sneaks an anxious peak halfway across. The river is not getting any warmer. He should probably take a break. He stares at the canyon walls, drenched. He will not take a break.

On try number fifteen the sun is setting and he’s full of carefully controlled frustration. He charges up the canyon wall in a blind rage and—

It only took three steps.

Okay. Overpowering emotion drowns his constant analyzing and calculating and _thinking_ enough to move freely in the dreamscape. He has to feel and not think. Emotions. Not his strongest area. Waiting for his cloak to dry flung over a branch and picking river reeds out of his hair, he tries to imagine how the hell you feel like you’re somewhere else. He closes his eyes and tries. Rushing water. Crumbling stone. A wide open sky. He opens his eyes, and he hasn’t moved an inch.

He smacks his fist into a boulder and accidentally crushes it, thinking _I don’t have time for this, I need to get back_. But the thought catches him, hangs on him, like it might be an idea. He needs to get back to Naruto. He stands. What was the one thing that consistently overwhelmed his emotions and knocked out his ability to think intelligently?

He closes his eyes and thinks of rushing water and crumbling stone but this time he dives deeper, into the agony of being pulled towards both the darkness and _his_ sunshine. He focuses on the acidic feeling of unfamiliar red chakra, driving a wedge into his heart for what he doesn’t know, what he can’t keep up with. He hones in on the sweet ache of sunrise and words that make him hope that this is loss, that the boy on his left has room enough in his heart for him. He thinks, _take me where I can meet him. Take me back to him._

He opens his eyes in the Valley of the End.

Obito is waiting just outside the main gates, hidden in the tree line. He sees four and not two shinobi emerge from the village and heaves a deep sigh. There was a reason he sought out Naruto and no one else: each mind freed from the god tree punched another hole in their pseudo-dimension, shortening its lifespan. But this is Naruto we’re talking about, who talked him down from world domination. He’s a magnet for comrades, even of the worst ilk.

That’s no slight against the unexpected guests. The kunoichi all seem like fine, skilled people. He may or may not have met them before, but frankly the constant chakra drain of the tree on his already injured body was making his cognition a little wonky. From the way the Hyuuga stiffens when she sees him, he thinks he should probably remember. The Yamanaka woman doesn’t exactly seem at ease either. But their dynamics with him he could…do his best to manage. What’s surprising is their dynamics with each other, obviously telegraphed by their body language.

Sakura and Yamanaka are joined at the hip, unconsciously leaning in towards each other and giggling at inside jokes. The Yamanaka says something into Sakura’s ear and she goes as pink as her hair. Given Naruto’s updates on her marriage status, this must be quite new. Still, harmless enough. What bode worse is Naruto and the Hyuuga walking as far apart from each other as they physically could without getting called on it. He has a sneaking feeling that was the not-wife. He winces.

Fifteen years, neatly packaged in four days. Time compression is the Tsukuyomi’s specialty. It isn’t real time, just information masquerading as memory. But reality is subjective, and even false experience alters a person. Even if they make it out, the scars of this dream will not be quick to fade. It almost makes him glad he was busy being shoved ‘offstage’ for the majority. However that had involved being essentially dimensionally waterboarded, with his consciousness held down in the space between realities in a choking muddle of darkness and pinprick lights and strange knowledge and forgetting. Between a decade and a half of invasive memories and clawing his way back into timespace with nothing but Kamui and a prayer, he’d put it at about equal. 

“Obitooo!” Naruto calls, waving a hand. Obito bit back a smile. The boy was truly terrible at keeping a low profile. Still, the barrier team didn’t descend upon them in all their fury, so maybe they had gone the official route, filed some kind of bogus mission that would require two of the village’s most vital shinobi. Or maybe they had an in with the barrier team. Reassured as to his relative safety, Obito steps out of the shadows.

Naruto and Sakura greet him easily, while the other two hang back. They’ve all packed for multiple days travel, despite their destination being in less than two days’ range. Obito had suggested this. There was still a chance that reality itself would rebel against being dismantled, or, sage forbid, Kaguya could come to them before they were ready. Their timetable is short, but time inside and outside the dream weren’t a one-to-one ratio. So he wastes no time, body flickering up the nearest tree, and the others follow in short order.

It’s been a long time since he did something as pedestrian as tree hopping. But he’s Konoha born and bred, and it’s not a skill one forgets. Naruto naturally takes point, but Obito stays behind his left shoulder, ready in case this journey stops being a pleasant outing sooner than planned. Sakura is across from him on Naruto’s four o’clock, with the Yamanaka and the Hyuuga taking the rear. The Hyuuga in particular picks the spot in formation furthest from him. The Yamanaka actually approaches him.

“You’re the one who knows the most about this place, right?” Leave it to a Yamanaka to sniff out the best source of information. He nods. She frowns and asks the one thing all the other young shinobi are too shell shocked or afraid to ask. “What are the children?”

“Ino?” Sakura says, and it’s almost carried away by the wind. ‘Ino’ just shrugs. It makes sense that she would ask. She seems intelligent, with a good grip on her emotions and probably freshest from the realization, or at least with less mind games in between. He could be wrong, but if she had children they probably weren’t…acting out like Naruto’s.

He’s acutely aware that while no one has slowed or turned to him, everyone is listening to his reply. “If I had to guess, orphans, mostly. Or children who aren’t happy with their families.”

Ino absorbs this, appraises it. Then makes a leap of startling intuition. “Whose dream is this?”

Obito has theories, but he’s not about to let their mission come to a screeching halt. He simply rebounds it to her. “You think it’s the children.”

Ino tosses her hair, which seems incredibly unnecessary given they are traveling fast enough that the wind at their faces is abrasive. “I don’t see why not. They’re the ones who got what they wanted.”

Her eyes dart to Sakura to their right. She’s not wrong. This isn’t everyone’s utopia, it seems tailored. But rather than poke that bear, he sticks to the facts. “We don’t know exactly how the dreams came to be merged. It could be that one dream swallows the others. But it could also be an amalgamation of all of them, or anything in between.” Maybe Kaguya morbidly favors the children and their dreams. Ino purses her lips, considering his non-answer. Surprisingly she doesn’t ask anything else, falling back into formation.

The others are absolutely silent on the matter.

You can really only call it déjà vu. Here Naruto is on a five man team, running with a heading of north by northeast through northern Fire Country to try and track down Sasuke. Only this team is much more balanced. For better or for worse, really just for worse except in this exact instant, Obito has years of experience in much more complicated strategy than simple traveling party security, and for all that Shikamaru takes the title of master stategist, Ino’s no slouch. They’ve got two master sensor-nin in Ino and Hinata, Two close range heavy hitters in Hinata and Sakura, a long range genjutsu user in Obito, two actual medics, and him, the nuclear option. And right now their only enemy is time. _No such thing as overprepared, I guess._

From the way they’re glancing back and forth Sakura and Ino are linked up telepathically and are deep in battle strategy or girl talk or something. He’s not really sure why Sakura brought Ino but it’s a tactical advantage (he pats himself on the back for actually thinking about tactics) so he doesn’t really care.

On their water break Ino kisses Sakura on the mouth and he belatedly gets it. He also belatedly gets that he’s leading a road trip with his ex, his… Sasuke’s ex, her girlfriend, and the guy who tried to kill them all. He collides headfirst with a tree trunk. While Sakura’s fixing his broken nose, he decides this is fine. He always gets along with everyone equally. Hinata is looking at him like he’s a rabid dog. This is fine.

Is it weird to be lonely while traveling at top speed through the canopy? It might just be a universal ninja experience. Or not, he always felt more than they say ninjas are supposed to. Which is stupid. His emotional reactions are his compass pointing ever north. Even when it hurts, like now. This pain is also his bond.

Yes, it’s all painfully familiar. This ache in his chest as he chases Sasuke’s shadow. But he also remembers his hand in Sasuke’s in the rat seal, and the promises they made, dreaming or not. You know what’s in my heart. I know what’s in yours. And you still want to fight? _You’re the one I want to fight the most!_ They were always so clumsy, from their ‘first kiss’. His ears heat to remember it now, in context. These things he didn’t even have to lock away in his heart, that he kept on his sleeve without even knowing. It’s going to be really embarrassing to see him, but that’s how it is. They love each other clumsily. And this time, for the first time since the mission this one mirrors so uncannily, he thinks Sasuke will be ready to come home to him.

_You still have a home to go to._

There’s a sound like a great temple bell that sends up flocks of birds from the trees. The vibrations shake his ribs, making a home deep in his chest. They all stop, landing on various branches as Hinata activates her byakugan and Obito scans the area with both the mangekyo and the rinnegan. Naruto doesn’t call Kurama’s chakra to the surface yet, doesn’t make himself into a walking flare in a sensitive situation. But it’s close.

Confusion pinches Hinata’s face and after a split second she leans forward and drops like a rock. They all follow suit, keenly aware that her field of vision is near infallible. They hit the ground soundlessly, masking their chakra down to the size of the small animals that move through the underbrush. It’s darker on the forest floor, and it takes a moment for him to see her. Standing braced against the roots of an ancient oak, Sarada stares them all down with her single tomoe sharingan.

The fact that Hinata doesn’t immediately run to the child sets off alarm bells in his head. Hinata may have taken Sarada’s loss the hardest. Even if her parentage was falsified, it’s still a child she cared for come back to life. But there’s no relief on her face, just that confusion.

“Hinata?” he grunts. Her eyes don’t leave Sarada.

“I can’t see her body,” she says, “I can see her chakra but not her body.”

“It’s rude to talk about people in front of them,” Sarada responds. Naruto’s taken aback. She had only ever spoken to him once since she died. She had only ever appeared to _him_ , no one else that he knew of, and he had been mostly convinced she was a hallucination. But he looks around at his comrades now and they can all see her. Sakura is rigid as steel.

Obito steps forward. “Sarada,” he says, “nice to finally meet you, _cousin_.” She glares at him fiercely and he stares back just as intensely, sharingan to sharingan. As he scrutinizes her, realization dawns. “You’re in between.”

She makes a show of ignoring him, yelling past him at all of them. “You can’t go any further. If you go you’ll mess everything up.”

Naruto’s jaw tightens. She knows something. More than she should know, more than she should be able to know. That’s dangerous. Obito must see it too, but he ignores Sarada ignoring him and continues to address her. “I see. You saw through the dream and were able to alter it to fake your death. But not just alter it—you found a way to escape through the cracks in this dimension. To hide.”

“I didn’t change anything.” The longer he looks at Sarada, the more he sees distress in her: her hands quake in their small fists, her voice comes out harsher than her usual controlled tone. “I just wanted to be alone for a while, and she—she made it like I died!” She bites her lip immediately with regret. Naruto is stuck on that ‘she’, making his hair stand on end. Really, who else could it be?

Obito drives right past that tidbit, donning a mask he recognizes from days of sitting in a tan office. “Why did you want to go away?”

“Shut up!” Cool, polite, sweet Sarada is gone. She flickers through hand signs too fast for him to track, stomping hard on the ground and raising a slap of earth that she roundhouse kicks directly at Obito. He lets it phase through him in a trick Naruto had loathed to be on the other side of. _Sarada can use Doton_ , Naruto has time to think just before the brick almost knocks him out. He ducks and it sails past, exploding into dirt on contact with the forest floor.

Sakura vaults over his shoulder. She nearly dislocates his shoulder, actually, flying through the air like a water bullet. When she lands between Sarada and Obito, back squared, feet braced, he can almost believe the two girls are related.

“Naruto, keep going.” She says, her back to him and her hands fisted at her sides. “I’ll be right behind you.”

Ino surges forward but cuts herself off, clearly making good use of her mental link with Sakura. When she looks over at him, Naruto sees his own determination reflected in hers. Because maybe Shikamaru would say it’s stupid to separate from arguably their most valuable team member, their best medic and one of their heavy hitters, so early on. But Shikamaru’s not here, and there’s no one in this world who believes more in this woman than them. So even if history is repeating itself, he’s going to let it. History’s got nothing on Haruno Sakura.

Sakura reaches out into the dappled sunlight and gives them a thumbs up. She disappears in a blur of pink as they body flicker away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have Hinata Opinions in that it irks me how much of her character is just made solely to serve male characters and be a male fantasy. She's a sweetie with acute Naruto Female Character Disease and a history of abuse and I just want her to be free.   
> But on a lighter note GAY SHIT HELL YEAH what if we kissed in the naka river and we were both girls haha jk unless  
> Tune in next week to see Sakura fight this 12 year old


	8. O-SE-WA-NI

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the sake of historical record, let it be known that between this chapter and last most US colleges have shut down and are switching to online models due to the corona virus pandemic. I go to one of those colleges, and consequently I have been a little busy with the all of it. Accordingly this is an edit-light chapter, but I didn't want it to be late with no notice, so I am posting it. However, I'm gonna go ahead and give myself an extra week for next chapter. I may end up posting it sooner, but the cushion seems necessary at this point. Thank you for your patience.

Sarada’s eyes dart sideways as the traveling party slips away, sharingan easily tracking the normally invisible movement. However the one she lunges for is Sakura. There’s an order of priority here: she knows she’ll have to get through Sakura before she can even try to pursue them. Sakura’s almost proud of how fast Sarada’s thinking through the logic of it.

That’s the danger right there. Having Sarada in front of her is different than having her picture on the wall. She can feel the dream logic trying to reassert itself. She can feel the static imitation of motherly compassion seeping into her skin, reminding her of things that never really happened. First words, first steps, Sarada holding her apron as she cooked dinner. It’s enough to make her hesitate, until Sarada’s chidori almost connects with her ribs.

As she dodges, the pops of electricity springing to connect with her skin are a vivid enough reminder of what is at stake. A fight is a fight is a fight. With a guttural yell she slams a fist into the ground, the shockwave propelling Sarada backwards. Sarada is still a genin, and a young one at that. She’s already used one chidori, and even if her limit is higher than Sasuke’s was at her age, it exists. If Sakura can get her to spend them, her chakra reserves will be shot. The sharingan is a whole other problem, even if it is significantly less developed and she could probably break through its genjutsu in a pinch. She’ll have to keep her eyes down, which means covering the blind spot with offense. She can do this.

Smash-and-dash had always been Tsunade’s preferred combat style, and Sakura was nothing if not her apprentice. She lowers her center of gravity, ready to hit hard and run fast. Sarada reads it though, flashing through the all too familiar signs for great fireball before inhaling and unleashing a massive bout of flames. It singes the hair on Sakura’s arms where they’re held in a cross block, even as she leaps back out of range. It’s not lost on her that she’s been driven out of taijutsu range. She’s not the only one with a strategy, it seems. Still, nowhere to go but forward.

Under a covering volley of shuriken, Sakura darts close enough to land a hit on the tree next to Sarada. She had pulled the punch, not wanting to fell the whole tree, but the resounding thump and the cave in the tree’s bark has Sarada quickly jumping out of close range and firing off another fireball to get more distance. Sakura goes with the flow, letting herself fall into long range again. And at the next opportunity, she brings it right back, running straight through a kunai to the thigh and grazing Sarada’s shoulder with an open palmed strike.

Dodge, feint, fall back, repeat. She never lands a direct hit on Sarada, always grazing, going for intimidation with near misses, aiming for the sturdiest junctures on the body. She does this because Sarada is so young. Young enough to think that this means she’s winning.

She hasn’t used the chidori again yet. It’s possible she only had the one, but more likely that she’s being cautious. It’s a finishing move, and while Sakura’s been making a show of losing ground, she’s not even pretend-tired yet. For every step Sakura’s taking backwards, she’s subtly driving another two forwards, and when they stumble into a clearing in the trees, she has a plan.

Sakura zips into close range again, throwing a swerving punch that rather obviously misses. But this time she goes for a two-hitter, propelling her other arm out gripping a kunai that Sarada ducks. Neither of her arms are guarding her torso. If Sarada has half a brain she will take the opportunity for what it is and strike her with her precious chidori. Being a genin, she’s almost sure to overextend her arm, pulling her forward enough to leave the back of her neck exposed. Sakura’s ready, has her feet positioned to pivot out of the way, has the kunai reversed in her hand for a knockout blow.

Sarada doesn’t take the shot.

Ino has complete faith in Sakura’s strength. It doesn’t stop her from worrying. If anything, it only makes her worry more; about what happens if she doesn’t hold back enough, and what happens if she holds back too much. The minute her mind had slipped out of range the anxiety had crept in, and she had a feeling it wasn’t going to stop. It was different doing a mission with people you loved (Chouji, Shikamaru) and someone you _loved_. Especially when it was so new. Right now all Ino wanted to do was wrap Sakura up in a blanket and just make out some more and feel her biceps and stuff. Not leave her behind to face her rogue imposter-daughter while marching off to destroy their residential dimension. But this was par for the course, wasn’t it? Chaos is the new normal.

It has been less than a day on the move and Ino’s just thinking that when she wakes up she’s going to take a long, hot bath. She’s not even the worst off among them. Naruto’s been even more tense since they left Sakura behind, she assumes for the exact same reasons as her. He looks like he hasn’t slept in longer than they’ve been asleep, which is a head-fuck. Obito keeps pace in front of her, and sage knows she can’t get a read on him but he’s alive and that’s messed up on its own. Ino doesn’t have Hyuuga 360 degree vision and can’t see Hinata directly behind her right now, but she had shown up at the gates looking like death warmed over with a touch of murder.

Without Sakura they had switched to line formation, Naruto at the head and Hinata at the tail. The maximum distance was clearly intentional on Hinata’s part, and honestly Ino’s not touching that with a ten foot pole. Obito was looking over Naruto’s shoulder because of his special special eyes, and Ino’s in third because they’re now unbalanced in terms of sensory abilities and there’s nowhere else to put her. She’s of the opinion that Naruto shouldn’t actually have point since he’s basically the payload, but that’s another battle she refuses to pick. It’s not like they were running into much opposition.

She hears Naruto squawk ahead of her. With the speed they’re traveling she has three seconds to wonder why before she’s spit out of the tree line by her own momentum into a field of bones. Not animal bones or even typical human bones—massive arches of white calcium, stabbing out of the earth like crocus buds. She grabs a kunai from her tools pouch and sinks it into the diaphysis of one, and it doesn’t even break through to the medullary cavity. It does slow her free-fall to a stop, just over some nasty looking points.

She had heard about this place. The deathplace of Kimimaro, servant of Orochimaru. These were his bones, his last act of devotion to the snake sannin.

From where she’s hanging, she can see Naruto caught by his collar on the hooked end of a bone, ever luck’s favorite child. He’s rotating back and forth pathetically. Hinata is still standing on the bough of the last tree before the edge of the clearing, what with her ten kilometer sight radius. Obito is perched neatly on the end of another white arch, and Ino doesn’t like the look on his face at all. Something is wrong.

She closes her eyes and focuses on expanding her senses. The chakra of this place is behaving oddly. Maybe Hinata can differentiate, but for Ino human bone on such a massive scale creates all kinds of warps and false positives. She tries to focus on the shifting patterns and finds what she already suspected. They are not alone in the boneyard.

Sakura skids back out of range. Years of conditioning tell her unpredictability is the greatest danger of all. At the same time, that wasn’t a random freeze up.

“You don’t want to hurt me,” Sakura assesses. Sarada grits her teeth, the tread of her sandals digging against the soil.

“This is our ideal world, and I have to protect it. I can’t stop now,” Sarada says. Sakura doesn’t know which one of them she’s trying to convince. But Sarada wants to fight, to be able to do something and hit something and that Sakura understands.

“Alright then. Just say when.” Sakura cracks her knuckles. Maybe it’s a little cruel but Sarada blanches and that’s what Sakura needs. This requires recalculation. Sarada doesn’t really want to hurt her. Sarada is just a girl full of fire mixed up in the wrong side of a cosmic showdown, and if that’s how it is, Sakura doesn’t want to hurt her either. Which means pure defense. If she’s going to fall back to purely dodging, there’s no way she can avoid looking at Sarada’s eyes anymore. She needs a counter to the sharingan.

“Mama-“

“I’m not your mom, kid. And you’re not the only one with something to protect,” she says, and for a moment she can see Sarada’s heartbroken face before she brings up a wall of earth. She’ll be lucky if it lasts her five seconds, but that’s all she’s asking for.

Scientifically Sakura knows what she is about to try is possible. Practically she doesn’t know anyone who has ever tried it. It would require a stupid amount of chakra control but it also shouldn’t be that much different from extracting fluid from a patient’s lungs. She’s got the odds on her side for both of those prerequisites. Sakura has faith in herself, has faith in the signs she’s combining on the fly. She slams her palm into the nearest tree and _pulls_.

Five seconds. A bit of an overestimation as Sarada tears the wall down in four but for one two and three Sakura is ripping the water from every cell in a tree several times taller than the tallest building in Konoha proper, from roots to leaves. It shrivels into a good impression of Kaguya’s all-killing ash bones and crumbles, and Sakura drops a thousand gallon blanket of water on the battlefield.

_SHANNARO!! Who has the best chakra control in Fire Country, that’s right, me!_

The weight alone knocks Sarada on her stomach but Sakura just waits as she pulls herself up on top of the massive puddle that’s covering the ground. She’s making a gloriously shocked face—a face Sakura is looking directly at through its reflection on the water. She keeps her eyes directly below Sarada as the girl reels, staring at the collapsed husk of the goliath tree. Still, Sarada quickly stows any fear and charges Sakura.

Sarada’s heel pivots left and her eyes go right and Sakura is dodging the kunai before they even leave Sarada’s hand. The cant of her elbow telegraphs the next strike long before she’s even in range, and Sakura follows the twist of her torso into her blind spot, tapping Sarada on the shoulder. She leans back away from the windmill kick to the face it gets her, feeling a bit like Kakashi-sensei. You don’t need the sharingan to predict someone’s movements. Just a keen eye and good attention to the position of the feet, the hands, the shoulders relative to the waist, and the all-important eyes.

The next time Sarada tries the great fireball Sakura raises a wall of water that snuffs it out clean. Her elemental ninjutsu may be rusty, but she didn’t get to be one of the neo-sannin by skipping the basics. Her doton and suiton serve her well. When the second chidori comes out she knows Sarada’s getting desperate. But again, her eyes go up and to the left before she moves, and Sakura doesn’t even have to counter. Sarada overshoots and barely avoids electrocuting the whole field. The third chidori follows in quick succession, and might have grazed if Sarada’s arms were a little longer. Sakura stands silent facing her where she’s bent over her hand, trying to force a fourth into existence. Blue sparks shoot out indiscriminately, burning holes in her own red tunic. Sakura can hear her teeth grinding, sees tears illuminated with blue light hit the water. Little sparks fall into the water like petals, inducing little muscle twitches in her calves. It stings and tickles. This is the feeling, Sakura thinks, of meeting your limit and hating it.

The chidori fizzles out and Sarada screams, taking the three steps forward it takes to reach Sakura. She slams her fists into Sakura’s stomach, beating uselessly against the med-nin’s chakra lattices. She has no weapons, no chakra, no allies. Not even a kunai to cut her hair with, Sakura thinks. Sakura remembers this feeling. This particular fury at your own lack of strength. There comes a day when you realize the world is deep and wide and the consequences are stark, and you are just a girl. For Sakura, there were many days of running up against futility, getting left in the dust, giving everything she had only for it to be spat back in her face. There are many days of believing and getting back up again and trying anyways, refusing to be just a girl in a dangerous world. There comes a day when you hold your ground even if you do it spitting blood, and just a girl is more than enough to be.

“It’s alright. You fought well.” Sakura lays a hand on Sarada’s head. Her fists twist in Sakura’s shirt and she shoves her face into it.

“I can’t—I can’t stop. Everyone’s depending on me,” Sarada sobs.

“Loyalty is nice and all, but it’s worthless if you don’t have your own sense of right and wrong, you know. And I think you’ve known for a long time that what’s going on is wrong.”

Sarada peaks up at her and it’s obvious she expects anger. But looking at her tear-stained face Sakura doesn’t have it. She could. Sarada is ostensibly the chain that was used to hold her down, an insolent kid who wanted to play house with her life. Equally so, Sarada could be mad at _her_ for not loving her like she wanted.

It hadn’t really worked out for either of them.

Sakura wraps her arms loosely around Sarada as her sobs grow quieter. She murmurs, “It’s okay. This time we’ll do better.”

Hinata knows before either of them. She recognizes the chakra signature of her own daughter. Not daughter. Either way.

Himawari slides out from behind a bone five times as thick as she is, smiling like she does with a fistful of flowers, hands behind her back. Even as she drops to the boneyard, she hears the click of Ino’s jaw as she picks it up off the ground. And, she doesn’t…like Obito. But exactly for that reason she’s beside him the minute he touches down on the scraggly grass, sparse from lack of sun. He won’t move a muscle without her seeing. Naruto is just staring and staring where he’s still hanging from a point. Like he doesn’t trust his eyes. It doesn’t matter what Naruto is doing, though. It really can’t matter.

When Himawari finally speaks, she says, “you’re la-a-ate” and pouts dramatically. It makes Naruto flinch and he finally scrambles for a kunai to cut himself free, but Hinata knows Himawari is talking to her.

Ino appears at her side, offering herself as firmament by the way she stands tall, shoulders aligned to Hinata’s. In her peripheral vison (everything is the byakugan’s peripheral vision) she can see her take in the strange scene before them.

“Ino-ba, do you like it? I think I’m getting better than Inojin!” Himawari’s smile is razor edged.

Ino’s eye twitches at the obvious goad. “They’re not going to give up that easy, kiddo. What are you doing here?”

The thick trunks of bone surround them like a bamboo forest, leaving little space to move and blocking direct sunlight. Some are crumbling from age, but most are perfectly bleached columns. The minimal white curves are marred with streaks of crayon, Himawari’s favorite. Red and blue and yellow and green wax is mashed into the grooves of the enamel. Yellow sunflowers with spiral centers, drawings of her brother and father. Green X’s at the center of Hyuuga curse seals. Red pupils with a single tomoe. Blue pandas and lion dogs, blue for Hinata with the eyes slashed through, a blue self-portrait holding hands with the outline of a woman with three eyes and two horns.

Several things happen in rapid succession. Naruto crashes to the ground face first, his cape torn nearly in half. Himawari reflexively glances in his direction, and away from the rest of them. Obito launches a shuriken at Himawari. In the milliseconds between his arm extending and ‘Himawari’ popping in a puff of smoke, she’s already dragged a kunai across the tendons of his outer wrist, and his fingers fall limp.

The regret doesn’t come. More clones do. Five slip out of the shadows of the bone columns, still smiling like sugar and sunshine. Obito’s hand twitches impotently but he looks at her sideways and doesn’t try anything. Ino’s eyes had widened at the bloodshed but now she stands stone faced. _Would you really heal the hand that dealt death to the one you called family?_

“Eh~” one of the Himawaris hums, “that’s not nice, mommy.”

“You didn’t answer Ino. Mind your manners, Himawari,” Hinata says. With Himawari, there’s something bubbling up, close to the surface. The child looks at only her. Hinata wonders if the girl hates her, if she loves her, or something else altogether. Whatever it is, Hinata is the focal point of a spectrum of boiling emotions.

Himawari smiles wider. “Sorry, Ino-ba. I just have to beat you, that’s all. Otherwise you’re gonna ruin all our fun!”

So that’s how it is. It’s all gruelingly predictable. Minor obstacles splitting them off for the sake of reaching the finish line, as always. She loathes to think of it like that. Himawari is not an obstacle. Hinata has brushed her hair, held her hand, sang her lullabies. For a little longer, Himawari is her daughter. No one is going to touch a hair on her daughter’s head.

She turns to Naruto, deliberately scorning Himawari’s stare. “Leave me. I’ll take care of this.” Naruto’s brows furrow and he opens his mouth, undeniably to protest, but Hinata beats him to the punch. “For my pride,” she says firmly, “let me do this.”

Obito moves to his side and grabs him by the shoulder before he can try to protest again. After a moment of hesitation Ino joins them as well, nodding curtly to Hinata. She seems to understand. They disappear into the maze of bones.

“Ehehe, are you gonna fight me, mommy?”

Hinata takes a step forward. It doesn’t matter which ones are clones, she’s sure the real one is watching. “No.”

The clones’ smiles twist into frowns. “You won’t hurt anyone, will you. It’s not your job. Good girls don’t hurt, they get hurt. Even if you wanted to you’d be too weak to try.”

“Himawari.” Hinata breathes slow and measured. “You should learn to talk less in battle.”

Rage rises in the faces of the clones, and all but one rush her at once. She doesn’t have time to watch what must be the original hanging back, dispelling each clone in rapid succession with a strike to the gut, pushing her open palm into four identical copies of Himawari’s favorite sweater. It was a straightforward head on approach, maybe childish, but maybe—not. Himawari has a green crayon in her fist, lifted to her forehead. In the seconds she’s bought with her shadow clones, she draws the Hyuuga curse seal on her forehead.

It makes Hinata sick to see it, but even that only lasts a moment. The second it’s completed something strange happens. Himawari glares at her and then her body is morphing, making Hinata sick for an altogether different reason. In a blink the girl’s shape swells like a cooked marshmallow, taking on the pale yellow of her sweater as concentric rings of red, green, and blue bloom outwards on its skin like targets. Appendages sprout like a balloon animal inflating, legs with hooked claws, a thick tail ending in a sunflower head, and three long necks towering over her. On her right a blue ringed neck sprouts the head of a lion dog, lips curled back in a snarl. In the center a crude imitation of the wood mask with the red markings rotates to face the right way up, lined with a fringe of yellow petals. On her left she sees only a blur of green and yellow stripes and a mass of black and white swinging directly at her.

_Protective Eight Trigrams: Sixty-Four Palms!_

The third head stops dead in her net of chakra strikes. The giant panda head holds its form for a second before bursting into cross sections of cotton stuffing. Hinata watches it float to the ground and thinks.

The real Himawari is hidden in the belly of the beast. She can see this easily with her byakugan, which no child should be able to fool with genjutsu, let alone one this extensive. Whatever this thing is, it’s not natural. This much is known. What to do about it is not. It has no tenketsu; from the looks of it it’s basically a giant stuffed puppet, which renders Gentle Fist almost useless.

Almost. For wide range destructive offensive damage she has two key jutsu left in her arsenal. One of them is staring at her in plush form. And some decapitation can’t hurt.

A little too caught in her own head, the sweep of the thing’s tail almost takes her off guard. Almost. She is a Hyuuga, nothing catches her off guard. She throws herself to the ground, tucking and rolling as it passes inches from her head. But while she’s still on one knee, the lion-head swings around, a set of teeth the size of her arm yawning open. She manages to throw herself out of biting-range but the broad side of its face connects and sends her flying.

Looking at this thing could make a person motion sick. For a moment she’s disoriented in the air, expecting to tumble and fall, but her throat tightens with the knowledge that there’s no one there to help her back up. She is alone, and there is no room for error. She orients herself based on the natural chakra signature of the earth and twists herself to land on her feet. Pain spikes up her shins but it can’t matter, and she drives a kunai into the ground to slow her backwards slide.

A one on one fight is a game of saving seconds. Himawari had clearly expected her to go down with that hit. Everyone underestimates Hinata, including herself. But right now Hinata refuses to lose a single moment.

It pays off. The lion-head lunges at her again and this time she’s prepared, body already halfway into the attack. The Eight Trigrams Vacuum Palm pulses into the open mouth of the lion-head. It swells and implodes in a burst of white fluff.

Two of the creature’s necks end in nothing but protruding stuffing now, lashing about like unattended garden hoses. The third gives a serpentine roll that causes the mask to rattle hollowly. Every second this draws on she gets further behind the group. It’s time to go for the throat.

The beast seems to have the same idea, claws scraping the ground before it charges her. Blue chakra ignites in her hands, molding into Twin Lion Fists. She vaults upwards to meet its last but a claw sinks through her pant leg, into her calf. She can’t help it. She screams. Air is rushing past her, she can see her sandals above her, seemingly planted in the blue sky.

It’s not over. There was a time when she would have taken the excuse to give up, accepted that she wasn’t strong enough. It might have been more recent than even she was aware of. But not right now. The spark or anger had transformed something in her, made room enough for something she wasn’t supposed to have. Pride. She meant what she said to Naruto. She had to do this for the sake of her pride. So on her honor as a ninja, as a Hyuuga, as a woman, it isn’t over until she’s dead.

The throws dual kunai and watches the ninja wire attached to them grow taught, nearly garroting the red ringed neck. It draws blood from her fingers but she holds on, swinging forward into the beast’s chest and swinging onto its back. The thing lashes out be keeps a firm chakra grip on its surface, and the Twin Lion Fists reignite with a roar, burning the cuts on her hands like salt. She sinks them into the mask’s neck and _tears_.

The wail of the beast could shake mountains. Then they’re falling, and Hinata knows she was right to go for the heads. Hinata lands on battered legs as the beast collapses like it were a toy. Her arms ache and blood drips from her pantleg. Still, she starts forward, because she has to get Himawari out of that thing, even if she has to tear it apart with her bare hands.

Himawari’s giggle bounces off the shattered bones around them. Hinata’s eyes widen a fraction.

“Stupid. You gotta hit _me_ if you want to win.”

“No.” Hinata’s reply is firm and instantaneous, neither loud nor quiet.

Himawari’s smile turns sour. “Stuuupid! Are you too weak to fight a little kid?”

She thinks Himawari doesn’t even know. Hanabi was four years old when she beat Hinata for the first time. When she went down pebbles dug into her cheek and she could taste the dust rising from the dirt of the Hyuuga compound’s courtyard. Her father was looking down at her from the engawa, sunlight throwing his shadow heavily on the shoji paper. She didn’t know that he was going to renounce her, yet. She was just bruised and sorry because how could she hit her baby sister?

She is a ninja. She is meant to fight, and she didn’t mind. There had always been things worth fighting for, even if she had never counted herself on that list. But when her father or her team leader or her Hokage turned her against her family, her friends, innocents in the line of fire, she was the weak one for standing down. She’d accepted that, like any number of things people told her. Benign things like sit up straight or smile. Don’t speak until spoken too. Don’t let yourself be a burden to others. Be smaller, prettier, quieter. After all, she’s not even the heiress—just decorative. A voice that sounds a lot like Sakura says _bullshit_.

“My kindness is not a weakness,” Hinata says, fledgling anger flaring up inside her lungs. Himawari frowns. “I won’t hurt you. I refuse to hurt you. There are people worth fighting and you’re not one of them.”

What does it mean to be a strong shinobi? To kill anyone you’re pointed at? Isn’t that kind of mindless violence what got the hidden villages into four world wars? Isn’t it saying something that unquestioning cruelty is the heart of what shinobi value? Questioning is a sin, inside the Hyuuga compound and out. She just cares too much to be strong, they say, like Naruto isn’t the big hero for doing the same thing.

Himawari doesn’t understand it, though. The shuddering of the plush monstrosity goes still and there’s blind fury gathering in her eyes. Hinata sees those eyes and realizes she believes Hinata is looking down on her, and she has no time to set her straight. Before she can blink seven clones are striking at her vitals.

Obito’s head is buzzing. His arms are like lead, and he has to make an effort to keep on a straight line. His eyelids are unbearably heavy and his every muscle goes electric with pain and sensitivity, but that’s the kind of thing one develops the life skill of pushing past in the ninja world. Still, he’s exhausted. He was half dead before the Tsukuyomi and has been continuously hemorrhaging chakra since. He is not in top form, per se.

He will not let this show. In truth, this task is the only thing left for him in the world of the living. In the storybook perfect version of this world, he died, and he’d even venture to say the Infinite Tsukuyomi might have been right on that point. Ino looks at him and he knows he caused her an immeasurable loss. He owes it to her and all the other ninja he doesn’t know to fix what he can, but beyond that what good is he? Beyond that there’s nothing.

This mission is by default the only thing that matters. So he will suppress the physical pains of this body, and not a trace of his exhaustion will ever touch his face. He’s been through far worse than this, for much less worthy causes.

He’s being maudlin. Maybe it’s the change of scenery; they’ve emerged from the forest into a rocky badlands. It’s an indicator that they’re drawing near to the Valley. Large crops of rock jut out of the earth at a slant. The further they walk, the higher the stone slabs rise, giving the distinct impression of teeth closing around them. A cave becomes visible where the earth closes in on itself in the distance.

Naruto looks pale in the face. Obito knows he has followed this path before and he wonders what he sees right now. Ghosts of the past are rather indiscriminate in where they settle. Naruto points to the mouth of the cave and says, “through there.”

Caves. Why is it always caves.

When they pass through the mouth of the tunnel he can feel the dip in temperature under the cover of hundreds of tons of earth. In the remains of the light cast from the entrance, he can see Naruto’s head turning side to side. He doesn’t like it. For Naruto of all people to be actively observing is just unnerving. He can’t check his curiosity any longer.

“What are you looking for?”

Naruto starts, throwing on that big smile that Obito more than anyone knows is a shield. “Just, I came here when I was a kid, once. Back then I saw all kinds of weird stuff.”

“Weird stuff?” Ino chimes in.

“Like…memories, kinda.”

Ino asks what he means but Naruto just shrugs. A possible complication. Obito squints, head pulsing as he tries to untangle the logic. The cave had some mystery properties that could be chakric, psychic, or dimensional. It could be a mind-fuck genjustsu that somehow sunk into the natural chakra, a place where space-time naturally ran thin, or any number of things. Add on top of that that the version they’re currently running through is a dream, a simulation, with dubious fidelity to the original. Each possibility adds another fork in the tree of possibilities. At least it’s just an ambient effect.

Obito blinks hard. At first he thinks that his vision is failing, but it’s just the last of the light from the entrance disappearing with a disconcerting thickness. A wall of darkness falls in front of his eyes. Sensory deprivation automatically has him falling back on his other senses, and he notices that the only footsteps he can hear are his own.

Fuck.

“Naruto!”

His voice doesn’t even echo. It’s like he’s been locked in a black velvet box.

“--Ino!”

No reply. He doesn’t like this. It’s dark and cold and stone surrounds him on all sides and he’s alone and his body is half dead. Animal parts of his brain are screaming not again, not again, not again. The air seems to freeze in his throat. He clutches at it, hunching in on himself.

An unmistakable voice rings clear as a bell. “Obito-kun.”

He swings his head around, looking for the source. Of course, he can’t find it. It’s so dark he can’t see past his nose, and he knows it isn’t really Rin’s voice anyways.

“C’mon. You’ve got to be brave now. I’m watching over you, after all.”

It’s not real, it’s not real, it’s still not real as a chain of vivid childhood memories of days long gone rip his chest open from the inside. Sunshine in the schoolyard and scrapes wrapped up by gentle hands.

“You wouldn’t want to show me your uncool side, right?”

His feet seem to move on their own. He follows the sound deeper into the cave, blindly stumbling over the earth floor. The voice is steadily getting closer, calling gentle encouragements. He only realizes what a fool he’s been when ice shoots up the length of his body.

The thing no one bothers to note about being frozen solid is that it hurts. Frostbite occurs over time, and by the time real tissue damage sets in the nerves are already numb. However, suddenly exposing skin to severe cold, such as falling in a river in winter or being on the receiving end of the elusive kekkei genkai ice release, produces a stinging sensation akin to being set on fire. Obito has a high pain threshold, but it’s the needle that broke the camel’s back. There’s only a moment to summon the chakra to breathe fire in a last ditch attempt to break free. A moment to recognize Ino and Naruto, who have also been given the popsicle treatment, illuminated in the yellow light. A moment to meet Boruto’s clear blue eyes where he’s perched on a jut of rock.

Unconsciousness presses down, thick and numb.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'Almost threw hands with a 13 year old' meme here.   
> Yall ever think about a world where Himawari or Sarada is the protagonist of Boruto-era. Because I do. Frequently.   
> I know that cave made Naruto have some childhood trauma visions but I can't find any lore on it so ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


	9. Children's Day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit of a short one but hey! we're back!

Somewhere in the canopy, Sakura can hear a thrush singing. She doubts she would have normally noticed such a tame sign of life. Only she’s been listening to that same call for five minutes or so, and it has yet to vary in the slightest in pitch or timing. Somewhere she can hear a thrush singing, but she doubts there’s a thrush anywhere at all.

Sarada has not noticed this. She stares at her arm where Sakura waves mystic palm over her still-developing bruises, unwinding the tale of her return.

“I knew it was wrong, letting the dream go on. But Hima-chan and Boruto were so happy. I couldn’t face them. I was a coward. I just wanted it all to go away, so I found a way out and I hid.

It was dark, but there were lights. It was neither cold nor warm. Being in-between lets you see everything, but none of it makes sense. If I stopped trying to make it make sense I could just let it wash over me, like if you could sleep at the bottom of a lake. But sometimes I saw things that alarmed me, and it drew me closer back to here. I saw Boruto and Hima-chan leave to set an ambush for you, and I knew I couldn’t be a coward anymore. Right or wrong, somebody had to protect them.

Once I made up my mind, coming back was easy. It was noisy, though. Like the line between dimensions was a string and I had plucked it. I think my body’s still catching up, though, if the byakugan can’t see it.”

Sakura mentally rewound to the point where she had gotten stuck, listening to this. Ambush. Himawari and Boruto were planning an ambush. Fabulous.

“Why are they doing this?” Sakura asks, brow pinching. The last traces of bruising fade and she removes her hand. Sarada looks up at her with an odd kind of heartbreak on her face.

“We all have our reasons,” Sarada says. Sakura can practically see her warring emotions rising to the surface, and not wanting to push her luck she doesn’t ask again. Instead she stands and brushes off her pants, testing her overused muscles for another go.

“We should get going,” Sakura announces. Sarada doesn’t ask but Sakura can read the confusion in her body language as well as if they actually knew each other. She stretches her hand out to Sarada. “We’ve got to find our teammates. You really think Naruto can survive without us?”

Sarada blinks. Adjusts her glasses in a poorly concealed effort to wipe her tears. She grabs Sakura’s hand and pulls herself onto her feet.

The current of hot air hitting cold ruffles Obito’s hair as he peels back his blackened lips from the flame that is far too close to his teeth. The bright light exaggerates the bags under his eyes and all the other little signs of exhaustion. The flare floats up like smoke as the tensed muscles of his face go completely slack and his head falls limp.

Ino only sees that flash, and she does not know what she does not know. She does not know if Obito Uchiha is dead, but her medic brain is kicking in and telling her assume the worst, prepare for the best. Only, which is which? Because is it really the best case scenario if the man who killed your father survives? How can she call it the worst case if he dies?

It’s loud. She can tell Boruto has never killed anyone from just the snapshot of his face when he saw Obito flame out. Boruto is yelling through the darkness about how no one can stop him, and the panic in his voice is so clear it’s oppressive. Naruto is shouting back, demanding he release Ino so she can heal Obito. Which, that’s right, she’s supposed to heal. Only Hinata had looked at her when she shredded the tendons in Obito’s wrist and an understanding had passed between them about the nature of loss and mercy as only they could see it. That thing wasn’t worth healing.

Seconds are precious for a medic. She feels numb as she wastes them. What it would mean for that man to die, what it would take, she can’t understand it. There are too many variables, too much bitterness blooming in her heart. But—at least understand what you’re doing, if you’re going to do it.

“What happens if he dies in the dream?” she asks, and it cuts through the incessant shouting like a knife. Neither boy replies to her.

“I said, what happens if he dies in the dream?” There’s a dark edge to her voice not even she’s familiar with.

“I don’t know!” Boruto shouts, always goddamn shouting. Naruto, at equal volume, says that everything will be fine.

“He died in the dream before, remember? He’ll be fine!”

Good to know everyone is panicking together. A real team effort. “We don’t know that. What if it’s chakra exhaustion? That could affect the real body, we don’t know.” Clinical knowledge, easily fetched. Genjutsu can’t injure you, but it can cause you to injure yourself. If the dream was at all related to the real exertion of chakra, Obito could be dead on the spot. Obito might be gone already, there might be nothing she can do anyways. Maybe he’s crucial to the plan, but this group has impeccable luck and a knack for thinking on the fly. Only, and by the sage she means this is the only reason, there’s a much better med-nin she’ll have to explain this to afterwards. “Let me through.”

“You can’t!” Boruto snaps. He’s become erratic with the dread, she can tell. Children who know nothing of battle should really stay home.

“Did I stutter?” Ino bites, with the heat of a poorly contained wild fire. The ice around her body sinks away without another word. Her legs are going to have frost bite, and when she’s done saving some scum’s life she might have to clothesline the boy about it, if he’s still insisting on fighting.

With her hands free the first thing she does is a simple light jutsu. The cavern is bigger than she had assumed, something like three stories high and lined with ledges and intersections of other tunnels. Wasn’t this thing supposed to go straight through? Dream logic made her beautiful brain hurt. Boruto hasn’t moved, still standing on an outcropping of rock like being higher up will actually give him the high ground, incredibly pale and the face and watching her like a hawk. Naruto is straining against his icy encasement. She sprints past both of them and wills that beautiful brain to kick into med-nin gear and let her sink into the neutrality of autopilot.

Obito has been released as well, but without the benefits of consciousness has landed in more of a loose association of limbs than an actual repose. She straightens him out a bit and presses two fingers against his jugular. His heart is still beating. Her emotions couldn’t be more mixed up if you put them in a blender on high, but somehow…she’s relieved.

Okay. Down to business. She clears the char from his airways with a wave and knits back together the muscles that Hinata severed in his wrist. She runs through some basic prognostic jutsu and ascertains that her initial suspicion was correct: he was mostly suffering from acute chakra exhaustion. There were still far too many variables to know for sure what would work, what with the metaphysical questions involved, but if she could just get him awake and keep him that way, maybe. Maybe. All she can do is try.

Chakra exhaustion means waiting it out or a chakra transfusion. Chakra transfer is finicky, so it’s not her go to, but she can’t exactly prescribe him bedrest and vitamins for two weeks. People use chakra transfer very differently, and it requires a good amount of chakra control. It takes a high level of control to mold chakra to another body, and an even higher level to be able to manipulate its nature to something the host body will accept. She can do the first, but not the second.

Still, she’s not about to dump a ton of alien chakra into Obito’s system with no safeguards. No, she has an even stupider idea.

“Naruto,” she says, “The bijuu can share chakra freely, right?” Thank god chakra theory is her area, ancient chakra beasts are not in the standard course of study. Naruto stops squirming long enough to toss her a vague affirmative. “Boruto, I need you to release Naruto, I need the Kyuubi’s chakra.”

Naruto gives her a thumbs up. Boruto is less enthusiastic. “What?! No!”

“ _Did I fucking stutter?_ ”

Boruto releases Naruto, less as a calculated action and more as a knee-jerk reaction to Ino’s tone. Ino watches the way his hands twitch from the corner of her eye. All she can do is hope he doesn’t change his mind and glare very purposefully. For his part, Naruto rushes to her side with the Nine Tales’ chakra already welling up under his skin. She holds Obito’s life with one hand and coaches Naruto with the other—he’s done something similar enough before, so it’s not as bad as it could be. Naruto clasps Obito’s hand and presses chakra that feels like acid and red skies into his tenketsu system.

She can’t pay attention to it, but Boruto is yelling. Panic makes him full of bluster, and Naruto responds to it easily. The child hasn’t even lived long enough to know what a good threat sounds like, let alone an apology. It’s a mess, and Ino tries to drown it out as she watches Obito’s chest rise and fall, once, twice.

“Idiots! You can never leave, so stop trying! Stop already or I’ll beat you into the ground!”

“Why you- what’s up with this runt?!”

The last question had been directed at her, but she was a bit busy. Obito’s brow twitched once, and his eyes slid open.

The instant it happens every muscle in her body seizes as they’re refrozen like a plate of leftovers. Probably for the best, she doesn’t know who she would have hit first.

Sakura has never been to the boneyard in northern Fire Country, but she doesn’t think it’s supposed to look like this. Whole stands of the bone spears have been crushed outwards, shafts fallen pell-mell like pick-up-sticks. She stands at the edge of the once-clearing, scanning for any sign of activity. Sarada appears by her side and activates her sharingan, taking off instantly. So much for stealth.

There is not good way to navigate what’s essentially a particularly macabre spike pit. Sarada’s small and can move through spaces much easier; Sakura, trailing behind, has to get creative to keep up. But the boneyard is already falling down around her, so she decides it can’t hurt if she just pulverizes a few of the obstacles.

While she’s focused on smashing bone she almost runs into Sarada’s back, stopped on the edge of a freshly made clearing. The girl is staring, and Sakura can agree with the sentiment. Even looking past the giant teddy bear—teddy something—even looking past the blatant destruction, the sight they’ve walked up on is jaw-dropping. The way Hinata moves is not like a dancer, not like beauty. She executes the eight trigrams sixty-four palms with resplendent mastery, confidence that never before settled easily on her bones. Each strike uses only the movement necessary to connect, and each strike lands. The strikes ruthlessly dispel a horde of Himawari clones from all sides. They come from every angle and it doesn’t matter one bit. A Hyuuga-typical open palmed strike recoils into an elbow jab which then turn into an upwards knife hand that takes out three clones spanning a one hundred eighty degree range. Sakura has never seen anyone use any strike other than open palm with the sixty-four palms.

Amidst the brutal strikes, one misses by a hair from a clone’s faces. That Himawari slips back and with a look of ungodly rage generates a new round of clones. Not a clone then, and not a miss either. The picture is coming together. Hinata would never strike down a child. She’s already realized which one the real one is and is purposefully avoiding her, leading to an endless stalemate. Not really a stalemate either, if you knew anything of the skill it took for Hinata to hold her position. A particularly artful demonstration of force.

Still, the clones keep coming. Sweet Hima-chan has the look of a cornered and feral animal. Logic must be far beyond her at this point, abandoned for the sake of a more primal set of emotions that have been festering under the surface. She zips around like a wasp, milky eyes locked on Hinata. As Sakura watches, she slips behind Hinata’s back.

Even though she knows Hinata has a three hundred and sixty degree line of sight, the cry spills out of her automatically. “Hinata!”

Hinata does not look up, but singly focused Himawari does, surprised at her new audience. She freezes like a bug in amber. Not in a figurative sense. She literally stops dead, her small limbs seemingly pinned in place. Sakura’s gaze flicks to the back of Sarada’s head. The squared line of Sarada’s shoulders speaks to a deep kind of mental strength that genin really don’t need. For all intents and purposes, that is her sister. It’s no small thing to raise a power like the sharingan against her, but Sarada doesn’t waver. Such a grown-up kid. Who let her grow up this fast?

Sarada steps forward once Hinata dispels the last of the clones. Hinata looks at them once before she turns her face away again, causing a screen of black hair to slip over her shoulder, hiding her face from view. She staggers once and Sakura is by her side. Evidently Hinata didn’t escape the barrage unscathed. Up close Sakura sees the lacerations on her hands and the blood still trailing from her leg, and she wants to say something to let Hinata know that she understands how hard she fought, but she doesn’t think she knows what Hinata wants to hear right now. Instead Sakura cradles her hands in healing chakra and Hinata watches the children stoically over Sakura’s shoulder.

Sakura hears rather than sees the conversation. It feels only fair. She probably wasn’t meant to hear these things at all. Sarada’s high clear voice carries whether she wants to listen or not. “Hima-chan, we have to stop.”

Himawari starts to sniffle. “I don’t want to go back.”

Sarada sighs. “I know, but staying here would be wrong.”

“Who cares!” Himawari’s voice actually gives Sakura a start. “I don’t want to go! I want to stay free!”

Hinata’s hands stiffen in hers. Hinata slips out of her hold and Sakura turns and is confronted with the sight of Himawari sobbing. The Hyuuga kneels in front of the little girl like she were delivering a lecture about proper crosswalk safety or washing your hands thoroughly.

“But we’re not free here either, are we?” Hinata says. Sarada must have released the eye of hypnotism, because Himawari visibly deflates. Sakura thinks about the regrets that had been threatening to strangle her not so long ago. She thinks about all the things she wants to do if they don’t die, and she understands, a little.

“It’s like a coloring book,” Hinata continues, “it will look pretty as long as you color inside the lines. But you’ll never be able to color outside those lines, and it will never be as fun as drawing your own picture. I know you want more than this place has to offer you, and I trust you to draw your own amazing future. You’re a very good artist, after all.”

It’s more words in a row than Sakura’s heard from Hinata in a long time. Himawari’s sniffing slows and eventually stops, and the girl is clearly exhausted but is intact and somewhat soothed. Hinata lifts her onto her back, and just like that they’ve seemingly come to a consensus. It baffles her, but there seems to be an underlying understanding between the two that no one can intrude upon. What Hinata said clearly meant a lot to Himawari. The little girl snuggles into Hinata’s hair and makes no protest as they set off to the north. Sakura finally gets to ask about the giant mass of cotton, and almost falls on her face when Hinata says it’s Himawari’s work.

She looks back at Himawari, who’s cried herself drowsy. What a fragile-hearted creature. Sarada was no different, both so easily swayed by the least bit of care. For the umpteenth time, she wonders what kind of reason they could have for trying to stop them, and what’s waiting for them in Konoha. No matter how talented they are, they’re still just kids.

As they leave, Sarada looks once over her shoulder. She was probably trying for discretion, but as a ninja it was a hundred years to early for her to pull one over on Sakura. “What is it?”

“That thing Himawari made… it’s big.” Sarada murmurs.

Sakura blinks. “Yeah, huge.”

“Making something like that would cause a pretty big disturbance.”

Paradoxes. Exploits in the dream logic. The exact thing they’re trying to beat to the punch. That is… not good.

_You better not do anything stupid, Naruto._

Naruto sees the Land of Waves.

Ice release is a rare kekkei genkai, very nearly exterminated for its massive power in defense, offense, and deception. It was even useful for healing if you happened to need a cold compress. Ice release was a lot like wood release in that it was the intersection of two elemental chakra natures, wind and water, and could only be used by those who had it in their blood. But perish the thought had Orochimaru ever sought to recreate this kekkei genkai- ice may look fragile and elegant, but its destructive capabilities were totalizing. Naruto knows these things, or at least has heard them recited to him at length over the course of his Hokage apprenticeship. Or at least has the implanted memories of not listening while someone recited this to him at length during his Hokage apprenticeship. Either way, it’s not what he’s thinking about now.

Other people have nice things they associate with the people they love. Flowers and favorite foods and junk. Naruto sees a knife edged pane of very lethal ice and his heart stutters with the powerful sense memory of two of the best and worst moments of his life. Ice release isn’t chakra theory or strategy or any of that, it’s Sasuke in Wave. It’s Kurama’s chakra—something he’s _never felt before_ —breaking loose and flooding his veins, twisting his very bones because Sasuke just died for him. The only person who had ever cared to protect him was Iruka, and Iruka was a grown-up and not his peer. That week Sasuke had ate with him and trained with him and actually smiled at him for real, and now his was spattered across the wood bridge. And now Naruto was going to burn the world.

What felt like an eternity afterwards, Sakura running through the fog, smiling and waving and shouting that _Sasuke’s okay_. The relief spilling over into tears because right then this was the best thing anyone had ever told him. He would see Sasuke smile again, and they could still be rivals forever and ever, and suddenly there was a future again because Sasuke, Sasuke, Sasuke. It was a mantra that had served him well ever since. So, the cave doesn’t even need to show him anything special because when Naruto sees ice he sees Wave, and Wave is Sasuke, and for all his moody monochrome attitude Sasuke has always been in technicolor.

This had been his first thought when flame first lit up the cavern, orange light bouncing off a hundred floating shards of ice. Even more so when he saw the figure of a child—his mind is fogged and for a second it’s like déjà vu. _Haku?_ But no, a different child with a different broken mask.

Boruto freezes them again and the shock of sheer cold has him hearing the rush of river water. Or maybe that’s just his blood. Kurama’s chakra is still close to the surface, so that when his muscles twitch Naruto can feel the beginnings of hairline fractures in the ice. Just like in Wave, Kurama is his only shot. He waits, putting pressure on the ice here and there and hoping.

“I’m wearing a crop top, you brat!” Ino squeals.

“Shut up! Shut up shut up shut up!” Boruto says. He growls, gripping his head. “This is supposed to be my dream world, where no one can bully Sarada or seal Himawari and we have a family that cares about us, so why can’t you just _act like it!_ ”

Naruto stops breathing for a second. Problems aren’t complicated, but people always are. Boruto is not his son but… he also is, in this space. Real, unreal. The family resemblance is showing through now, in the way that even though he’s an orphan there are many shinobi Naruto would call his siblings. In a world full of different ways to suffer, the blood of lonely children calls out to each other. The hope of making a connection is enough to kill and die for.

Boruto is trembling, staring at the ground. “If you don’t give up, I’ll kill you. You hear that! I’ll kill you!”

“Well that’s too bad, cause I _never_ give up!” Naruto replies. He kind of sort of has plan, even if no one else would call it a plan and Sakura would hit him very hard if she knew about it. But after all this time holding still, there’s nowhere to go but forward. His fingers twitch and the ice shatters around him, the hairline cracks he had opened prying open into deep fissures. The fragments that fall away are instantly swept up into a maelstrom of razor edged hail which coils and whips around Boruto, whose blue eyes are wide in upset, though not commital between anger, fear, or despair. There’s no time to consider the finer tactical points, and frankly he doesn’t care. He pushes forward as fast as his legs can carry him, straight at Boruto, leaping onto the plateau he stands on. A thousand needles of ice bear down on his skin.

“NARUTO!” a voice screams. It sounds like Sakura.

Boruto stares at him, shaking like a leaf instead of a leaf ninja. An update on things Naruto knows about ice release: it hurts a lot. This isn’t good, he thinks, staring down at the ice shrapnel impaling his forearms where they’re braced against the ground. A drop of blood splatters against the stone. Still, he can’t stop. He pushes upwards and basically falls towards Boruto, who spatters him with another, weaker round of crystals. They connect easily, but Boruto flinches when they land, and he doesn’t raise a hand against Naruto again. Probably cause he looks like hell, but he’ll take what he can get. In the barest moment it gives him, he reaches out and pulls the boy into his chest.

“I’m sorry!” Naruto tries not to yell in Boruto’s ear but there’s so much emotion in him and it all wants to rush out of him at once. “I’m sorry I left you alone. I really wasn’t prepared to be a father, but that’s no excuse! I’m sorry I couldn’t be the family you needed!”

Boruto is rigid as a board in his arms, but quickly he can feel the boy’s tears dampening his overshirt. And probably some blood. Naruto scrambles back, wiping his own blood from Boruto’s cheek. “Ah geez. Good thing this isn’t real, that would have made an awful stain.”

“You can’t do this,” Boruto says, voice thick with tears. “I just tried to kill you.”

“I’ll be fine,” Naruto says, very much hoping he’s telling the truth. “So don’t worry, okay?”

Blood loss feels funny. He never gets used to it. He’s aware of reassuring Boruto, and then he stops thinking and the floor is in his face. His head is warm and buzzy as he becomes aware that he’s face up now, and as his vision starts to kick in he sees a familiar green glow.

“Hey Sakura-chan.” He rasps. She just sighs. Must have been a pretty big scare if she’s not yelling at him. Speaking of which, he can hear Sarada verbally ripping Boruto to shreds as he count stalactites on the cave ceiling.

“I’m here too, you know,” Ino says. She helps him sit up after they mend his internal bleeding. Sarada, Himawari and Boruto are grouped together like a flock of ducklings, berating and teasing each other but mostly seeking the others out for secutrity. Obito looks about as good as he feels, but is upright on his own. Hinata watches on from a back wall, so everyone’s back together, and mostly in one piece.

Another near death experience in the bank. He waits to catch Boruto’s eye, smiling wide when he does. Boruto doesn’t smile back, but he also doesn’t glare, which Naruto counts as a win. Boruto clearly isn’t trying to hurt anyone anymore, so as long as the boy knows he isn’t mad, everything would be fine. Naruto could show him over time that he meant what he said. For the moment, they’re on a tight schedule with saving the world and all.

He stands, ignoring Sakura’s indignant squawk. “We have to keep moving, we gotta beat—”

That sound like a temple bell. It thickens the air so he could practically feel the soundwaves roll over him. It’s strikingly like the state of half-consciousness he had just passed through, making his skull buzz with that clear and even metal tone. The children go pale.

Boruto looks at him with grim eyes. “She’s here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did you know there's basically no synonyms for bone? After writing so much about bone I am very acutely aware of this. Also, every time I try to write fic for anime, I end up writing the dialogue like I'm trying to recreate the cadence of translation, which is wild, cause I like... study japanese. I know that isn't how it works. Ah well.  
> If everything goes as planned there will be two more chapters of this story. Ya'll ready to kick Kaguya's ass?


	10. It's Not The End of The World

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a few choices I want to justify in advance-  
> Kaguya uses 'warawa' to refer to herself, which is an archaic pronoun, and in her flashback dialogue (to my untrained ear) her Japanese is ambiguously old timey, and I just think that's really neat! Since she's been trapped in the goddamn moon for hundreds of years, her speech should be super dated right? However in trying to convert this idea to english I realized that the closest I could get was Elizabethan English, so now it's like. Kaguya: wouldst thou live deliciously. And frankly I have no regrets.  
> I also made ninja god gay because fuck it. Hagoromo's whole bit with that thief twink Futami is just an extensive meet cute, tell me I'm wrong.

Sasuke is dragged out of light meditation by the sound of brass reverberating, vibrating through his body on a molecular level. His eyes snap open and he tears off his eyepatch to search over the landscape from his position atop a rock in the river of the Valley of the End. This happened once before and nothing followed, but deafening cosmic resonance isn’t the kind of thing you sit back and ignore. The back of his throat tastes like copper, and dread clamps down on his mind, whispering that something is coming. Something has arrived.

This time it’s not just for kicks. A resounding crack bounces off the canyon walls as the stone pass that leads into the valley crumbles inwards on itself. He winks closed his rinnegan eye to determine if it’s happening on the same plane he is, and it’s not. Opening it again, he wonders if this is for better or worse. Distantly, he hears a voice like summer.

“Run!”

Sasuke pushes off from the stone with enough force to split it in two and takes off like a shot. His feet barely touch the water of the river, cloak snapping behind him. His hand finds his sword out of reflex, which is probably not a bad thing. Trouble follows Naruto more reliably than most tracking ninken and this is obviously no exception. A flash of orange crests the hill and Sasuke’s resolve clicks into place like a set of gears. Naruto is his counterbalance, and the minute he sees him Sasuke becomes steadier than stone.

There are other people, because of course, Naruto doesn’t believe in being alone. He bypasses them entirely to go straight to Naruto, reaching out to grab his shoulders. His hands go straight through air and he bites down on the inside of his cheek. Sasuke is not there, technically. The rinnegan lets him see and hear throughout the layers of the dream, but it doesn’t change where he actually is. Naruto looks right through him. Sasuke releases his grip on his sword to brush the space where the blonde’s fingers would be, just for a moment. He looks around. The group he’s chosen (or been saddled with) is eclectic, to say the least. Sasuke vaguely recognizes the children from half-memories the dream continues to try to assert in his head. He sees the older girl has jet black hair and the sharingan in her eyes, and he remembers a dream of the in-between. _My daughter, Sarada_.

Sakura’s presence is only expected. He doesn’t really care about Ino. Seeing Hinata makes something ugly twist in his gut, and he hates it. As he passes, Obito looks him directly in the eye, one rinnegan to another, and nods. Sasuke thought he was dead but whatever, a rinnegan is a rinnegan. Obito starts to say something but Naruto cuts him off.

“Here she comes!”

“Defensive formation!” Ino shouts. They form an imperfect diamond around the children, facing the ruins of the cave. Sasuke follows their line of sight. Earth explodes upwards from the sunken pit, and the moon rises.

The rabbit goddess emerges from the rubble untouched. Her mass of pristine white hair billows in the sky like the bell of a jellyfish. She descends with all the exertion it takes to breathe, white pupils sweeping across the downturned crescents of her eyes. She looks over each of the humans and isn’t even affected enough to show disgust. Kaguya peers down at him and her gaze feels like a physical weight, but Sasuke has a knack for pushing back. He slides into the gap in the formation created by the odd number of ninja, and his blood sings. This is what he’s been waiting for. The sharingan whirls to life in his right eye. _If you want my life that bad, come and get it._

Kaguya’s gaze settles on Boruto. Each shinobi is wound taught as a bowstring, waiting to counter an attack which still does not come. The goddess’s mouth falls open and her jaw shifts under the colorless skin, as if she has to physically readjust to speaking.

“Child, wherefore thou coil me so?”

Boruto balks under the weight of that stare, blood draining from his face. Sarada and Himawari press to his sides protectively.

“We’re done playing. We want to go home,” Himawari says. A wrinkle appears in Kaguya’s marble brow.

“Thou list to return.”

Time is precious to a ninja, but Kaguya predates their kind. She is apparently in no rush to smite them, and Sasuke grabs on that meager resource of time and refuses to let go. He has to think. He did not come all this way to stumble at the final step. And that’s when it hits him that he did not come all this way.

He has no reason to believe he will ever see Grandma again. If he lives, he will wake in a different reality, one without nearly as much leeway with the laws of space and time. He will be on one side or another, and she is in-between. But he remembers something she had said. _“I’ve seen many things, been many people. I don’t remember my beginning anymore, or my end. Even if I did know, known and unknown are so fluid. Maybe we’ve met before, who knows. Maybe we’ll meet again.”_ He hopes they do. He wants to thank her for the gift she’d given him, in the form of a hint, which might just save them all. With a strong enough push in the right direction, he was able to move the dream around him. That was all he was capable of, but Naruto was always the better dreamer.

“Thou foil me. Art thou so distempered with my creation?”

“No! You gave us everything we wanted. But…” Sarada trails off.

Sasuke catches Obito’s eye and signs covertly behind his back. He has to keep it simple and it’s less than ideal trying to communicate with one hand, but a flash of recognition lights Obito’s face. In turn, he touches two fingers to Ino’s wrist. She glares at him on reflex but then nods, repeating the gesture to Naruto. The Ino he remembers was nowhere near the level of casual telepathic connection, and Sasuke is once more forced to acknowledge that he’s not the only one who’s been moving forward these four years. Naruto smiles like the sun coming out, looking around and uncannily settling on a spot just to the left of Sasuke’s head.

“And what cheers thee, knave?”

Sasuke curses internally. Naruto just smiles easily, eyes winking closed. “Man, for an immortal space queen you’re kinda dumb.” Sasuke hears Sakura choke. “Is it that hard to believe that we don’t want to die?”

“Thou wilt die regardless. Now stay thy tongue ere I grave thee where thou stand.” Kaguya raises one hand over Naruto, ashen bone sliding out of her palm. Sasuke’s heart stutters.

“Good thing I’m not standing here, then!” ‘Naruto’ dispels into smoke the instant the all killing ash bone comes into contact.

There’s a reason Naruto is able to rely so heavily on his shadow clone technique, not just as a child with few skills in his arsenal but as a full-fledged jinchuuriki and, in this instance, roundabout hokage. Having fought alongside and opposite of the shadow clone jutsu for years, Sasuke, like many others, sometimes get complacent about it, but the fact remains that it’s a forbidden technique that most jounin can’t pull off. Being able to create nearly infinite combatants with just as infinite chakra will solve most of one’s problems. In his estimation it’s still a cheap trick, but a fox has no qualms with fighting dirty. He’s never been more glad to see it.

Naruto’s voice pinballs around the valley. “Hey Kaguya-dono!” Veins bulge in the goddess’s face as she tracks the sound with her eyes. “over here!”

Naruto’s voice throws taunts from all around them, clones darting in and out of sight. Kaguya’s jaw twitches.

“I just heard something re-ally interesting!” Naruto calls.

“You came here through your portal thing right?”

“So you’re just visiting!”

“But this is our dream!”

“So basically, we can do whatever we want!”

“Silence!” A shockwave pulses out of Kaguya’s eyes. For all their bluster no one has time to brace for the first hit, which is a brutal wall of raw force. Most of the party is knocked prone. The children remain untouched, but he lands face-down, with his damn hair in his face, and scrambles to right himself. He may have broken a rib. Kaguya’s hair snaps and writhes and turns steely, shooting fine needles in every direction. He can tell from sound alone that each one finds its home in the body of a shadow clone. True to her command, for a moment it’s fully silent.

Sarada starts to laugh.

“What, whelp?” Kaguya asks.

“You missed.”

Kaguya whips around to face one remaining Naruto, rocketing up from beneath the earth. He’s standing stupidly close, and Kaguya doesn’t hesitate to snatch him up by the collar, bone extending from her other wrist. Sasuke screams his name even though it can never reach him.

“You can’t kill me.” Naruto says, smiling wide even though his hands are shaking. Kaguya just narrows her eyes. The all killing ash bone draws close to the hollow of his stomach, but he does not flinch. Instead, he—dispels? No. A puff of smoke encompasses Naruto—and Sarada by Sasuke’s side. A henge—at some point they switched places, and Sasuke doesn’t even know when. The smoke dissipates and Kaguya stares into the sharingan of a girl who is more than enough.

“You already tried.” Sarada says.

Kaguya freezes. Shinobi deal in seconds. Beside him, Naruto emerges from the smoke where ‘Sarada’ had been. Two spheres like Rasengan, one light and one dark, swirl in his hands.

“Yumeton: Shokurou!”

Naruto slams the orbs into one marbled ball of chakra reminiscent of a bijuudama, and shoves it between Kaguya’s shoulders. Sasuke’s cracked rib screams with pain as he laughs at Naruto countering an ancient god with a made up jutsu called food prison. This is a stupid time to be besotted but it’s also a stupid time to laugh, and, well. Then he replays what Naruto actually said and he stops laughing.

The ball of light and darkness assimilates into a black mass crowned with a ring of light that makes his eyes water. Not shoku as in ‘food’, shoku as in eclipse, the joining of the sun and the moon. Rays of piercing light condense and shift into white-hot chakra chains that weave around Kaguya before pulling taught and anchoring to the ground. She strains against the binding but it does not budge. Her hands strain but no bone emerges, And even the veins of the byakugan disappear under her skin.

The impact of the had shaken her vice grip on Sarada’s collar, and the girl tumbles to the ground and dashes back behind Sakura and Ino, who join hands to form a protective barrier in front of her. Sarada’s hands are still trembling but she glares at Kaguya with fire in her eyes. Strangely enough, she makes a fine Uchiha.

Kaguya is pinned by her own hubris. This dream dimension was a weapon she had given them to destroy themselves, and she is still shocked to see them use it against her. As the self-professed mother of chakra, she can’t even conceive of anyone who could pose her real danger, not even her sons, who could only imprison her. Fittingly, she will be defeated by her own power, dying in her own delusional world. She’s supposed to be immortal but Sasuke is more than ready to put that to the test.

“Are you ready to talk like grown-ups now?” Naruto says.

“Naruto!” Sakura snaps, probably on reflex more than anything. Hinata’s glare is definitely on purpose though.

“You know, since I became a ninja I’ve fought a lot of people who caused a lot of pain. It’s never hitting them that stops them. Well, there’s a lot of that too, but you get it.”

Kaguya’s frustration falls away, face smooth and impassive as marble. “Turn back.”

“It’s a little late, lady,” Sakura bites.

“Thou presume I aim to injure thee. Ifaith I am no foe. Hark,” the goddess pauses. The only sounds are the rush of the waterfall, ragged breathing, and birdsong. “A thrush. Doth it sing less sweetly? No, perchance more, sith yea if it’s feathers be red, they will never be blood-boltered. This realm is unsullied by suffering, and thou might hence live long and fortunate. Return to thine own and by turns it will look a world of strife. For the repair of what is mine, I offer thee paradise.”

No one speaks for a moment. Sasuke would be willing to bet that’s the most anyone has ever heard the rabbit goddess speak. Against his will, the words make dread rise in his throat. Paradise. A future where Naruto has a family with Hinata and Sasuke is away longer than he’s around. In a dream designed to create the perfect fantasy, that’s what paradise looks like.

It wouldn’t be wrong. This place was more peaceful than any version of the ninja world they had ever lived in. There was nothing wrong with it, really. It wasn’t exactly what he wanted, but putting his wishes before everyone else had always been his primary sin. These children would never know war. None of them would see what he had seen. They would just be happy. He didn’t want this, but Naruto might. And what were Sasuke’s wishes worth compared to that?

No one speaks. It’s an awkward, shrinking silence and he wishes he knew what they were thinking but he doesn’t.

“Verily,” Sakura bites, “you can take your paradise and shove it!” Kaguya’s mouth thins. “Where’s my paradise, I’m playing house for a guy who doesn’t even look at me! Don’t insult me! I’m not thirteen anymore, I’m not meek or naïve, and I sure as hell don’t plan on mellowing with age!” 

Naruto huffs. “Yeah! That offer’s crap! I only have one dream that matters right now,” and of course. Hokageship. Naruto wants to get the hat through legitimate means. It adds up. “-And that’s bringing Sasuke home!”

How many times has he heard those words. How many times has he refused to let them reach him. He hears them now and can’t suppress the hope that’s growing like a wildfire.

Naruto turns his battle sneer into a smile, eye-teeth glinting. “There’s no way I’d stay apart from my one and only.”

Well. That’s. Sasuke tears his gaze away from Naruto and back to the prisoner, but only barely. Whether he knows it or not, Naruto has successfully reminded him that they know each other’s hearts. He feels warm.

“Not to mention you have no claim on our chakra, even if we are descended from you,” Obito adds, grimacing. “Surely I don’t have to explain basic human biology to you.”

Naruto stand up straighter. “Hey, wait, yeah! Chakra is the bond between all things, you can’t own it! That’s like trying to own sunlight.”

Kaguya’s eyes narrow. “I am the progenitor of all chakra-bearing peoples. Thine chakra is but a fraction of mine.”

“Well, no,” Obito chimes in again, “plenty of ninja are born of civilian parents with no bloodline to speak of, and even civilians have a baseline amount of chakra. Not to mention if we had just been dividing up the same chakra for centuries none of us would have enough power to light a candle.” Kaguya’s composure is melting now, the ghost of a brutal sneer showing through. “It just doesn’t add up,” he pronounces.

“Chakra,” Sarada repeats quietly, “is the bond between all things. Of course you wouldn’t understand. The same way that you could never build us a perfect world. The bonds that connect us are beyond your comprehension.” In a blink she slides under Ino and Sakura’s arms, and they’re not fast enough to stop her. She stares down the Rabbit Goddess with eyes the color of poppies. “But I can show you.”

_(What-)_

_(What hast thou done?!)_

She awakens on a Saturday.

Sun leaks through the cheap floral print curtains she bought for a handful of coins at the corner mart, getting right in her eyes, so she wakes up immediately. She knows she won’t be able to go back to sleep no matter what, so she gets up, brushes her teeth, and puts the rice on. She leaves a tin cup of water halfway over the steam vent; a particular stroke of genius she was quite proud of figuring out. Obviously there’s no school, so she doesn’t need to wear her standard training outfit. As much as she likes it, it need washing, so while the rice cooks she pulls out a neatly folded sage green sweater and a pair of uniform pants from the old bureau and changes into them. There’s still fold lines up the sides of the pants, which she clicks her tongue at but doesn’t bother to iron out. They’re probably going to get wrinkled anyways. The green is not the most flattering color against her skin, making her look pale and wan in addition to unusually small next to the big size. She would never show up to the Academy looking like this. Looking so stereotypically like a poor orphan it hurts. But it’s the weekend and the sweater is soft and won’t get grass stains.

The rice cooker dings and she uses a towel to move the tin cup aside, tearing open a packet of green tea mix and dropping it in. She opens the lid of the rice cooker, scoops herself a perfectly domed bowl, and pours the tea over the rice. The remaining rice she presses into three neat onigiri while she eats her chazuke. She likes when things are exact, and come in neat measurements. It’s calming.

Of course it’s then that three loud thumps come from the eastern wall. She shovels down the rest of the chazuke and walks over to the wall, tapping out a message in standard code that she should not be disturbed prior to her morning ablutions. She returns to the kitchen to wash her dishes (rice should never been left long to harden in anything except nonstick cookware, which she did not own) only for her front door to get the same abuse.

“What the hell is an ablotin?” Boruto says the minute she opens the door.

“Ablutions. I haven’t washed my face. We were tested on that codex on Wednesday, don’t tell me you’ve already forgotten it.”

Boruto smirks. “Can’t forget what you never knew.”

She grumbles about his grades and he just smiles, so she tells him to do the rest of the dishes while she washes her face. He groans but complies, because she made lunches for both of them all week and frankly holds all the power right now. Which reminds her that he’s definitely going to steal at least one of her onigiri and she should plan to pick something up to go with it. Buying prepared food is a bit of a splurge, but it’s the weekend and she had done exceptionally and predictably well on that codex test. She could allow a treat.

Nice soap is kept in a little crystal bottle with a cap shaped like a cat’s head in her medicine cabinet. The soap isn’t super special, just better than dirt cheap, but the bottle she liked very much and she had decided that it deserved a place in her morning routine. She found it on the side of the road when she was walking back from class through a residential district one day, and of course she had to boil it before use and it was a little scratched, but it sparkled like something precious in the sun. She meticulously repotted her nice soap into it by hand and kept it in the windowsill where it could catch the light, and it felt a little like something magic she could rub on her face and become magic too. Now she pops off the head and scrubs it on in a hurry, because Boruto must be in a rush to be up and at it this early, but she will not sacrifice her routine. The soap smells a little bit like peonies as she washes it down the drain.

Boruto is antsy when she steps back out into the only other room in the two room apartment. She can tell because he’s gravitating towards the place in his identically mapped room where he keeps the beaded bracelet he worries when he’s worked up, but thinks is to childish to actually wear. She softly karate-chops the top of his head.

“Where are we going?” She asks.

Boruto hands her a paper bag packed with her onigiri. “Should go see Hima-chan.”

She wondered what Boruto has heard now. He makes a hobby of hanging around the tokujou barracks. He maintains that it’s because they’re more in the know than chuunin and less difficult to spy on than jounin, but realistically it’s just that they’re the ones least likely to drop kick him into the next country when he inevitably gets caught spying. In her opinion tokujou tended to be less hard-edged than jounin and less hotheaded than chuunin, but this was all speculation. Point being, Boruto likes to play recon and actually succeeds a decent amount of times.

The Hyuuga clan compound isn’t all that close to the run down, populous side of town they live in, so they play word games as they walk, in which the real competition is seeing whether Boruto can find a way to cheat and if she can find a way to catch him. They’re the only ones on the streets this morning, only partially due to the early hour. Boruto thinks it’s stupid that people try to stay indoors, because if the war really came here locking your front door wouldn’t stop it. She kind of agrees. The only place that felt secure was the Academy, with its robust staff and safety in numbers, which is probably why no one ever made the call to cancel school. That, and it was still too abstract a reality.

Eventually the cracks in the pavement start to close, and the buildings stoop lower and lower until she could see the crater edges of Konoha without skyline in the way. The Hyuuga compound is impossible to miss because it’s all stately dark wood and bamboo groves, and primarily massive. She thought it was a castle when she was little, and in a way she wasn’t wrong. As they approach Boruto mimes zipping his lips like she’s the one who needs reminding, and they veer off to what could be called the back of the estate, even though the backdoor was equally majestic as the front. They walk along the back fence and Boruto trails his fingers along the slats, while she wonders if Himawari would want one of the onigiri.

The two of them come upon a mismatched section of fence where presumably some jutsu related accident had occurred, and the fencing was never properly replaced. The particular section was wedged up against a grove of trees, so no one ever really noticed it from the outside, and it was a little used branch house training ground on the inside, so no one cared much about that either. It wasn’t a hole in the fence—one could hardly call oneself a ninja clan if one left open such an obvious defensive breech—but it was differently made, and at an angle you could see between the boards. This was how they knew Himawari Hyuuga.

No sooner than they had stepped into the grotto of trees, Himwari spots them with those all-seeing eyes and appears instantly at the fence. It reminds her of a caged animal that follows along the bars as people pass. There’s a heaviness in the young girl’s eyes that never leaves entirely, but seems particularly pronounced today, and she wonders again what Boruto has heard.

“Good morning, Hima-chan,” she says. Himawari’s eyes squint close when she smiles, so you can never tell if she’s sad for that moment. She sticks her tough little hand through the fence so she can hold hands with them, and it makes her wonder about what will happen when the day comes that it won’t fit anymore. By then Himawari will be an Academy student like them, and even though they’re still on track to be genin in a year provided Boruto doesn’t get held back, it would still be easier to see her there than here. As it is she’s never seen Himawari’s face without this fence in the way. It’s almost a staple of her appearance to be striped with its shadows. The Hyuuga are reclusive to begin with, and as the lowest ranking individuals in the whole clan, branch house children generally aren’t allowed outside the compound. Himawari never directly told them this, but ‘it’s against the rules’ is a common tag to her speech, and one can work out how much she isn’t allowed to do from how little she is.

She takes the little girl’s hand and Boruto sits in the grass, leaning on the fence, fidgeting with the wild daisies. Her bag is still heavy with onigiri so she picks out one to hand to Himawari, but she refuses it. The Hyuuga very politely asks her how her morning has been, and she complains pointedly about being disturbed at an early hour by her irksome neighbor. Boruto throws a daisy at her, but she catches it, an idea sparking.

She gathers the flowers Boruto’s absently picking and starts to thread a daisy chain as Himawari recounts her own morning thus far. “Hadta get up super early for training. Hanabi-sama’s gonna watch me tomorrow so Obaa-sama has me doin’ all kinds of stuff. But I got manjuu for breakfast!”

She passes the first few links to Himawari. She squeals with delight; they share a fondness of flowers. Boruto looks up from his brooding and snaps his fingers, reaching into his coat pocket and producing a little plastic bag. “I was gonna say! Why don’t we try and grow our own sunflowers out here?” He smiles. “If they get big enough you’ll even be able to see them over the fence!”

Himawari claps in delight, so she doesn’t mention that what Boruto’s holding are totally sterilized roasted sunflower seeds, or how this grotto only gets partial sun on its best days. But equally, she doesn’t have to say anything when he passes a handful to Himawari, when if they ever grew inside the compound there’d be hell to pay, and it wouldn’t be the stray orphans held accountable. Himawari and Boruto dig little holes in the earth with sticks and drop seeds in rows, copying patterns they had seen in the rice paddies, while she sticks with her daisies, never one for a fool’s errand. The chain is getting prodigiously long, so she directs Hima-chan to take a moment to thread it back though the other side to Boruto. He lays down his stick to examine it, somewhat taken by the puzzle-like aspect of it, and for a moment the three of them are all linked together, even across the fence. She has no reason to feel this happy about it, but she does.

A door slams from somewhere in the Hyuuga mansion, prompting all of them to look up. From Himwari’s descriptions the interior is entirely sliding doors, so producing a sound like that is a feat. Himawari has abandoned her sunflower seeds to stare at the compound, and she no longer looks like a careless child, those round expressive eyes filled with an acute sensitivity beyond her years. When you grow up fast it hits you disproportionately. Around them Hima-chan let herself be babyish, and she’s full of underdeveloped wishes and emotions, but sometimes she’s so cognizant of the nature of the world around her that it’s scary.

“It’s Obaa-sama,” Himawari whispers, “she’s upset. Can you come back tomorrow?”

She pulls the daisy chain back through the fence and hides it in the grass at its base, and they get out as fast as possible. As much as they both want to stay, making sure Hima-chan doesn’t get in trouble is much more important, so they scurry into the bushes and back onto the street.

She stares at Boruto for a long moment. “What was that about?”

Boruto kicks a pebble. “There’s talk that the fighting’s heating up.”

“What? It’s the second day!”

It’s complicated, Boruto says, something to do with the nature of the enemy which is far above their paygrade. She understands his worry now; neither of them have any family to speak of, but Himawari does. She has two cousins and the clan head on the frontline that are fighting for their lives at this very minute. She can’t imagine it. She tries to imagine Boruto being sent into combat without her and it just makes her want to hit something. When she became a genin, she was fully banking on both of them being marked for failure and getting assigned to a dud squad that wasn’t meant to pass the second round of testing, even if it meant she’d have to work three times as hard to carry the entire team herself. Maybe she’d get lucky and Boruto would lose his weird hang ups about using elemental ninjutsu, and they could both train up whatever prissy paper nin got stuck with them.

Half of the time she’s mad at Boruto it really traces back to that she knows he could be truly strong if he tried. That he doesn’t try is downright insulting with how hard she works with no kekkei genkai to speak of. If he says it’s a secret she’ll keep it, but she remembers being nine and hiding under her bed with Boruto in the darkness of the orphanage bedrooms, remembers him showing her once and never again how he could suck the warmth out of the air and make little shining crystals. To this day she’d never heard of a real ice jutsu like that, and when she remembers the fear in his eyes when she asked why he hid it she has to wonder if that’s on purpose.

She blinks and they’re at the schoolyard. There were too many thoughts in her head to keep them all straight, so she drops onto the grass like a ragdoll. Boruto sits beside her and she tries to imagine again what it would be like to send your family to war. Would they even be able to become genin? The streets are still empty and she doesn’t know how long it’s going to last, and all the jounin-sensei are away fighting an enemy she doesn’t understand, and they might lose. But this isn’t the first world war and they still have the same system, so maybe she can still become a genin even if they lose? Maybe they’ll make her one just so she can go to war, like they did in the old days. After all, she’s expendable.

“Do you remember when we used to play Clans?” she asks, like he might have actually forgotten.

“Of course,” Boruto sniffs. It was a play-pretend game from when they first entered the academy, and accordingly the first time they became aware of their social class. When other kids called them clanless nobodies, they pretended like they were heirs to the most prestigious families in Konoha, with secret kekkei genkai and scrolls upon scrolls of hidden jutsu. The backstories got more elaborate each time. At the start it was just a matter of what was glamorous, and they were lost Senju like the Hokage or deep cover Hyuugas wearing contact lenses, and they stuffed their pockets full of maple leaves that represented ryo and jumped around beating up invisible enemy ninja from equally prestigious clans. But as unattended children they had a lot of free time, so eventually there came to be some attention to narrative once they had exhausted the novelty factor of playing generically high-born. They started to get creative to the point that even the Yamanaka, a clan she could hardly pass for, had several distinct personas. Except Aburame, whose claim to fame mutually creeped them out. They once unintentionally made an Aburame kid cry by saying they would never play as Aburame.

She fiddles with her hair. “Want to play?”

Boruto’s eyes light up and she’s no longer embarrassed, remembering that growing up fast means growing up uneven. No one loved the boons of childhood like those for whom it is the only refuge.

“Actually, I was thinking about Clans lately. Like, now that we’re older we could make such kick-ass stories!”

“Language.”

“Narc.”

She huffs. “What’ve you got, then?”

He wiggles over to lie down next to her, and the two of them stare up at the blank sky, ready to fill it with dreams. “Get this,” he starts conspiratorially, “There are two clans we’ve never played.”

“Bull. We tried every single one in Konoha at least once.”

“Exactly! But there’s two Konoha clans that weren’t in the village,” he pauses for dramatic effect, “the Uchiha and the Uzumaki.”

She groans. “This is just cover for your dumb hero worship of that super old genin.” They made a habit of hanging around training ground, and Boruto had seen Naruto Uzumaki training all of once before he apparently decided the guy was the hero of everything ever. She had actually had to talk him down from bleaching his chesnut hair, and he had now made multiple attempts to steal the forbidden scroll to try and learn shadow clones. Historically she wasn’t so impressed, but if Uzumaki was secretly highborn somehow, she was at least interested. Still, “who would want to play as the clans of a huge doofus and the number one most infamous missing nin of Konoha wait oh my god.”

Boruto cackles. “Now you’re getting it!” She is getting it, yes. Their nine year old selves never even thought to play as bad guys, but doing something as simple as choosing lineage with baggage could put her finished character on a whole other level. She dredges up what history she remembers about the dead Uchiha clan and remembers that they had an incredibly powerful dojutsu that was also her favorite color. This version of herself could be mysterious and ultra-elite, skilled and level-headed. This version of herself would never flub the code demonstration and accidentally say she had diarrhea. But she stops herself before she can get too far ahead of herself.

“No good,” she blatantly lies, “Uzumaki’s still a cheat. Is it even a clan?”

“That’s the thing! Apparently it’s another dead clan and some of them lived in Konoha. They had crazy chakra reserves and fuinjutsu and stuff, and we haven’t even covered the other half of the lineage!” She starts bouncing her feet in excitement. That was certainly something they’d never thought of—bloodlines were supposed to be kept pure and all that, but even clanless or small clans passed on traits, and why did mixing blood even matter?

“And,” Boruto says, dropping into that sneaky tone again, “If we’re picking parents, you can make your mom Sakura Haruno. I hear she liked Uchiha when they were kids anyways.”

That tipped the scales. For all she chided Boruto’s hero worship, she was more or less the same about the Hokage’s apprentice. There was a time when she was younger when she fell out of a tree and broke her arm, and Sakura had healed it. The next day she saw Sakura crush a rock with her bare hands. Creation and destruction in equal measure. Sakura was clanless like her, but apparently it didn’t matter, apparently she could do anything. It was only logical that she would adopt the woman as her role model. After that she started to wear red.

“That’s a low blow,” she says, “Uzumaki.” Boruto grins like the sun.

She’s the one to suggest they set it in the future, where everything is peaceful and prosperous. Boruto insists on Naruto being the Hokage, and she lets it slide so that he’ll let her accumulate lots of miscellaneous skills and jutsu. It’s a brutal battle for who gets Himawari as a sister since there’s no way they’d ever be related (gross), but Boruto prevails with the airtight logic that everyone in town knows Hinata likes Naruto so they’re probably going to get married or something (also gross), and thus he has the Hyuuga blood. He’s getting pretty overpowered but she has a long game, and in her opinion the better backstory what with the (redeemed, she adds) criminal father and clanless wonder for a mother.

They spend the afternoon living in their own world. Boruto teaches her the hand signs he nicked for chidori, even though they can’t actually do it. They spar in character, developing a rich drama as childhood rivals aiming to reestablish their clan names in the ninja world, until they drop in the dust, laughing and covered in sweat. Even that turns into a touching reunion scene after a final battle. For a few hours, they act like the eleven-year-olds they are.

At home, she reminds him to eat something other than leftover takeout as she shoos him off to his door, and he sticks out his tongue at her. Her apartment is her only personal and secure space on this earth, so coming home makes her feel quite safe, but also lonely after a day of pretending she has a family to come home to. She stalls on the doormat, unwilling to walk another step until she knows exactly what she will have for dinner, before remembering her only option is fish and asparagus. Her shoes get lined up next to the door with care, since she only has the one pair, and she walks in straight lines between the stove and refrigerator. The fish and asparagus taunt her. Chouchou should be over any minute for girl’s night, and one simply did not serve a lackluster meal to an Akimichi.

The problem is solved for her when Chouchou walks straight through her apparently unlocked door unannounced, bearing bags that smell significantly better than anything Sarada’s eaten in the last week. She makes a mental note to herself not to scold Boruto so much about his takeout habit and takes the bags like a good host before launching into a hug.

“Easy, girl,” Chouchou giggles, “precious cargo.” She releases her promptly, suddenly embarrassed. Chouchou scopes out the room with a lazy gaze. “Man, the Hokage’s one cheap old woman. You make it look cute though.”

One great thing about Chouchou was she got right to the subject, which was especially nice when you’re shy and socially illiterate. Perhaps others would be more insecure about her blunt comments, but at their best they cut straight through what she was worried about and at worst they were old hat from years of living with Boruto’s lack of tact. So trust Chouchou to immediately comment on the apartment she’s so insecure about and automatically take out the worst case scenario.

“Do you wear nail polish? I brought some. I know you’re going to say something nerdy about the drag resistance or something but I know some perfectly respectable ninja who rock an all-black manicure.”

“I’ve never tried it.” She pushes her glasses up her nose. “And drag could never be affected by such a small surface area.”

“See that’s exactly what I mean, nerd. Let’s eat!”

Akimichi metabolism takes care of most of the meal, while across the table she attempts to cut her portion of katsu into even cubes like she would have for the fish and asparagus, only to be foiled when the breaded skin separates from the meat. Chouchou reaches over (it’s simply not a very big table) and presses out the wrinkle in her forehead with her thumb, and she abandons method entirely to just shove the strips in her mouth whole. Chouchou applauds this, but then has to physically stop her from doing the dishes.

Tonight is movie night, with the film of choice being some obscure romance flick from Frost Country with a lot of longing gazes and flute solos. Chouchou assigns characters to every kid in their class, reserving villains for those who made a habit of bothering either of them. Boruto is the dog.

“I don’t get it, he has nothing to offer!” she whines.

Chouchou hums, flicking the tar black brush across her nails. “I don’t know, he has a pretty nice face.”

“But who cares about that? His proficiency in ninjutsu is subpar at best! Ugh, she should be focusing on her political platform as a courtier anyways.”

“It’s no use, the young maiden hasn’t awakened to the world of romance.” Chouchou imitates the old fashioned dialog of the movie. The other girl socks her in the arm, even though it’s definitely true. All the girls their age are losing their minds over love and she is appalled about it. Or maybe just too busy trying to climb the social ladder through skill and determination alone and has become a little embittered, who’s to say. However she learned something today heretofore unaccounted for in her appraisal of the subject: Sakura Haruno liked someone. At some point, she had viewed one Uchiha Sasuke with romantic intent. She squints, trying to imagine her role model and the brooding missing-nin she barely remembers are the frost actors as they share a passionate kiss in the snow, and fails.

“Gross,” she says, and Chouchou snorts.

Once the movie ends she tries to convince Chouchou to take the bed, having already prepared a spare blanket so she can sleep on the floor. Chouchou will hear none of it and traps her in a bear hug before launching them both onto the bed. After a lot of squirming and shuffling, Chouchou takes the outer side and she takes the wall side. She hasn’t shared a bed with someone since she was in the orphanage, and in makes something warm bloom in her chest to see the Akimichi’s bronze eyelashes fall peacefully closed. She has not been close to many people in her lifetime, but Chouchou had broken those ranks with ease, and she never stopped thanking her lucky stars for it.

Softly as she can, she taps her knuckle against the wall three times, and after a moment three answering knocks come from Boruto’s side. She does feel extra lonely today, but bracketed by two of the people she loves most in this world, she also feels extra loved.

Far away, there is a war raging and a beast straining at its confines to destroy whatever it can touch. There are heroes and villains and ordinary people trying to push back the tide of humanity’s own mistakes, and there are children who never got to be children who grew up uneven and thus come to childish ends, and this is the world that she will be a part of someday. But for now, she is loved.

It’s only an instant of the tomoe appearing in shocking black against Kaguya’s white eyes before Sakura snatches Sarada back, curling her into her own body as much as she can as Ino covers her back. The sound Kaguya makes is deeply inhuman, more of a screech on metal than a cry, but she does not lash out. She weeps, tears silently falling down her face. They all back away as much as possible, not sure what this means.

“Do you get it?” Sarada shouts, voice hoarse.

“If I release you, suffering will always be with you.” Sasuke’s eyes widen fractionally at the change in Kaguya’s speech patterns. Just what had Sarada put in her head? “Pain will never leave you. It shall never be as easy as this to achieve or maintain peace.”

“We know,” Sarada responds, unflinching. “But we have to try. We need something you can’t give us. There’s no replacement for choosing to grow together.”

Kaguya blinks slowly, staring above their heads at something only she can see. And then she turns to face Sasuke.

“And what say you, child?” she asks, voice filling with ragged ends that have never existed there before.

He steps back. “Why me?”

The corners of her mouth draw slightly. “You are Uchiha, child of the moon, incarnate of my blood, closest to my kin. If I am wrong, aren’t I too far gone?”

He looks to Naruto, who is once more uncannily close to pinpointing his exact location, and wonders if it’s possible to convey how deep and wide goodness is, and how narrow is the bad. He tries.

“I used to wonder if I was beyond the point of no return. I thought it was impossible to move through life without hurting people, and such excuses only led me further into my own darkness. But that one,” he nods to Naruto, “always pulled me back. He insisted there was no point of no return, and eventually I realized that while I can’t change the past I’m still responsible for the present. Every day, I must decide not just to become stronger, but better. That’s _my_ nindou.”

She’s silent again for a long interim in which no one dares to try and offer additional testimony.

“Loosen my bindings, that I might end this.”

Obito shouts for them not to do it, but Naruto steps up and tugs a little at the chains. Kaguya extends her palms upwards, and brilliant red creeps over her skin like ink from her fingertips to her wrists, like a pair of gloves. “These hands shall henceforth be incapable of shedding blood, and their stain shall always show.”

Then she beckons Sasuke closer, and looking at her, he is not afraid. He approaches her and she bend her head to his.

“I am going to do something,” she murmurs, “that you may find foolish, but it is the hardest thing I could ever do.” As she whispers a last few words in his ear he turns to look over his shoulder, only to see all of his comrades looking back at him.

He nods, and the world ends.

_“Good job, boy.”_

He wakes up flat on his back in a well of darkness full of lights that are not stars. Every time he has slipped into this space he has known that they are not stars, but now it’s like he can look at them straight on, and when he does he feels the blurred impressions of places he has never seen before and never shall see: red skies over white beaches, underground lakes in caverns that look like the inside of a geode, strange lumbering beasts stooping under wide rainforest leaves, An earthen temple lined with jade and filled with song, countless more of ordinary people doing ordinary things. He comes to realize he is looking at reality from the outside—every reality, in fact. It’s mesmerizing, and a bigger and bigger part of him would be perfectly content just to watch the lights pass.

_“Even if you were to ask me to explain it, I honestly don’t think I’d really have an answer.”_

Sasuke’s immediately jerked out of his reverie. He turns, and alone in the dark is the kind of Konoha hospital bed he has slept on more than once, crowned with a tuft of blonde hair. He stumbles closer, and the darkness evaporates somehow to reveal Naruto sitting up in bed, covered in bandages and talking earnestly with Sakura.

“I always keep my word, believe it! I’ll bring Sasuke back for sure!” Sakura looks on the verge of tears watching Naruto recommit to a promise that just put him in the hospital. Sasuke didn’t even know what had happened to Naruto after their first fight at the Valley of the End, and he carefully watches the slice of life he had skipped out on. But it evaporates as quickly as it appeared.

He can’t shake the image of Naruto bandaged within an inch of his life at age thirteen.

_“It’s just, when I see you carrying that burden and going on about everything the way you do, somehow”_

Sasuke looks to his left and sees a light in the distance, bigger and softer than the others. He walks in that direction for a while and eventually it comes into view: a square ceiling light, somewhat old fashioned and battered. As he approaches it the darkness withdraws around it, revealing Naruto lying face up on a tatami floor with a hand clenched over his heart, closer to their age now. Sasuke watches Naruto, and Naruto watches the ceiling.

“Sasuke.”

Sasuke’s eyes widen. He only says it the once, and for a moment Sasuke thinks he’s actually calling out to him, but he continues to stare straight ahead at the ceiling with a wistful expression on his face. Sasuke’s heart twists. On a certain level he knew Naruto’s heart, but it was different from seeing whatever quiet moment this was, and bearing witness to a constant kind of care he had never even thought to want. He wonders if it was like this all the time, and how that could be. The light flickers out, and there is only darkness again.

_“I just hurt.”_

Sasuke thinks he’s expecting something this time, but it still catches him off guard when the lights that surround him start to fall. He looks up. They congeal and float downwards, and he’s utterly baffled until one land on his face, and melts.

“Naruto!”

Sakura’s voice. He tears his gaze from the not-sky and finds himself knee deep in snow, just in time to watch Naruto collapse face first into it. Sasuke jerks in his direction even though he knows it’s not real, watching Naruto hyperventilate into his collar, breathing out clouds of fog. Naruto doesn’t say anything but he knows this time, recognizes that this is one of many moments when Naruto thought he got close but still lost him. Sasuke just wants to help him up, but apparently it’s too much to ask. There’s no turning back time.

“ _So much pain that…_ ” Naruto’s voice trails off, melding into another. “I just can’t leave you alone!”

He blinks and the snow is gone. It takes him a moment to find the source this time, and he turns in a full circle dumbly in the dark. Finally he looks down and sees a reflection below his feet that isn’t his. It isn’t Naruto either. An oblong wooden mask with red slashes stares back at him.

It flickers over the plane, standing a few feet in front of him now. It stands about three heads shorter than him, with a long cloak obscuring its body. He tries to place where he knows it from but he can’t.

“Who are you?” Sasuke asks.

It’s as if the mask was able to smile.

“You know me. I am the equalizer, and the restorer. I am that which cannot be buried.” It extends a hand. “I am Truth, and you shall never be free of me.”

Sasuke thinks of the boy he loves who he hurt and all the other things he cannot undo, and the future he might create instead, and he smiles. He seems to do that more and more these past few days. He reaches out and takes the hand of a force of reality. “I’m counting on it.”

The mask nods and he’s falling.

The black rushes around him, disorienting and thick, until he’s left standing upright as if he never moved. He is alone again, but this time when he looks into the lights he remembers what he’s looking for, and as soon as he remembers to look for it it’s not hard to find. The light of home is no different than any other, but he could hardly mistake it when it contains everything he loves. He reaches out for it, and as his hand draws near it glows brighter, and his fingers thread into ones his soul remembers, mirroring his action.

“Found you,” Naruto says.

It’s not their first kiss, but this time around the moment their feelings meet will be the beginning and not the end. Sasuke’s sure of it as the light swallows them whole.

Naruto comes to as the reeds of the god tree are peeling away from his body, briefly freaking out as he realizes he’s probably at least a hundred feet up only to be deposited lightly into the dust. The vine of the god tree slumps beside him with a slimy thud, and around him other ninja shake off their bindings, looking dazed. Beside him Sakura wobbles on her feet and smiles at him before taking off to stop Obito from dying of strain.

There’s an intense sense of déjà vu as he looks up at the mountains only to realize they’re not mountains at all. Kurama grins down at him with the other bijuu by his side. He waves but doesn’t go through the whole slapstick routine he did last time; he’s got priorities here. Naruto takes off running through the crowd of stupefied ninja, looking for black hair and black eyes. He cups his hands around his mouth.

“Sasukeeeee!” He calls, always finding it the easiest word in his mouth. Through the confused murmur of the crowd he hears a quiet laugh as clear as bells.

“Naruto!”

He runs towards the source, bubbling excitement carrying his exhausted limbs. “Sasukeeee!” he repeats, only to come face to face with the man himself. Naruto launches himself at the Uchiha in what basically amounts to an all-out tackle, and Sasuke’s arms wrap tentatively around his back.

Sasuke flicks his forehead to get his attention. “Your dad.”

Naruto releases him, hopping up and down. “Still here?”

Sasuke nods and tugs his wrist, and Naruto follows automatically. They weave through ninja of all ranks and nations, many of whom he counts as friends. He points Ino in Sakura’s general direction as he flies by, waves enthusiastically at Gaara, and high-fives Kiba. People are grouping up now, and the word is spreading—victory. There are going to be some very strange side effects to the whole dream dimension alternate life thing, but he was sure it would work out, though he saw more than a few dream-spouses having some awkward conversations.

His father is waiting by the sage’s side. Minato smiles, and it still upturns a whirlwind of emotions within him. He knows from last time he only has a moment.

“Dad! Ah geez, talk about a rough sleep! Hey, tell mom not to worry cause I’m eating good and I always brush my teeth and—ach! I’m still a genin! Aw man but I promise I’ll make jounin soon and I’ll make you real proud!”

“I already am.” His dad never said anything in the dream dimension, and it’s so much. Tears well in Naruto’s eyes and he throws his arms around his father, stealing one moment to be close. Minato chuckles. “I wish I had arms to hug you with, Naruto.”

“Oh! Right!” Naruto releases him, grabbing Sasuke’s arm and tugging him over. “I know you said to find a myself a girl like mom, but I uh… won’t be doing that! This is Sasuke, and I love him more than anyone, which is really saying something cause I love a lot of people!”

Minato smiles gently again. “Take good care of him.”

They both say ‘I will’ at the same time, and that’s all the time they have. Minato dissolves into little lights that look like reality and returns to the pure land. Naruto takes a moment to grieve the father he lost before he was born, and Sasuke holds his hand tight as he wipes his tears. He’s sad, but happy too. He’s so lucky that they ever got to speak.

“You heading out too, sage?” Naruto asks. The sage nods.

“I’ve been away too long already. My husband Futami will be quite annoyed.” And. What. The sage chuckles at the evident shock on their faces.

“But—wait—you—kids?” Naruto stutters.

“Indra and Ashura? Oh, they were adopted. I can understand the assumption, since I passed the sharingan to Indra.”

Sasuke makes a choked sound. “You can do that?”

“ _I_ can do that,” the sage huffs.

“Wait, hold on. Then—no one ever had Kaguya’s chakra?!” Naruto exclaims.

The sage grins and shrugs and winks out of this plane of existence. Wily bastard.

“Naruto!”

It’s freaky how quickly things can go back to normal. He hears Tsunade yelling and he cowers with the well-honed reflexes he’s developed from years of dodging large bludgeoning objects.

“What did you do now?” She growls.

“I saved everyone, again, you old hag! Go do your job!”

“MY job? I’m retired. Where’s Ka-“

Kakashi-sensei materializes out of nowhere. “Not ever again, not on your life, no way.” It’s a standoff. The two adults turn to look at him.

“Well _I’m_ not Hokage, I’m a genin! And seventeen years old!”

Kakashi looks at Tsunade. Tsunade looks at Naruto. Naruto looks at Kakashi. “Not it!” Naruto yells, and runs as fast as he can.

Hinata watches from a distance as Sakura heals Obito as best she can, then retreats to hold Ino’s hand, and there are lots of feelings inside her that aren’t easy to name. That’s the strongest kunoichi in the world, healing a man Hinata despises and loving in a way Hinata couldn’t. This is not at all to imply she resents Sakura, quite the opposite. Hinata envies her ability to live for herself. People keep showing her that there are many ways of going about life that she’s never even considered.

Hinata feels hollow, and the dream had only made her aware of it. It was something that already existed, something which even her little cousin had picked up on. Around her people are talking of what they want to do next, and Hinata has nothing to say. What she wants has been kept to the limited palette of acceptable fantasies that would let her be Good in the eyes of her family. She has never thought to want much of anything. That is going to change.

After Neji’s funeral, maybe, it might be time to go away for a while. She’ll go alone, far away from anyone she’d be tempted to feel obligated to, and live as a traveler searching for the far extremes of life. It would be nice, she could sleep under the stars and talk to strangers and learn obscure histories of foreign lands. She could listen to her own thoughts until she could recognize what they were, and she would be glad to meet herself. A good old fashioned journey of self-discovery.

Hyuuga means facing the sun. They set with it and rise with it, and thus live a new life with each passing day. The sun is rising, and it is time to become something new. In the commotion of countless bodies searching for each other and voices trying to string together order, Hinata unholsters a kunai from her leg and holds it against the glint of the red horizon. She closes one fist around the length of her hair, pulling it away from herself, and cuts straight through.

Ino squeals as the plume of black hair hits the ground. Both her and Sakura spring up and immediately crowd around her, fussing over the remains of her hair. Her head hasn’t felt this light since she was a child. She hears her grandmother saying a woman’s hair is her pride, but more importantly Ino saying not to worry because her and Sakura are masters at styling impromptu kunai haircuts. They offer to touch it up and Hinata agrees. Each produce their own kunai and set about evening out the lengths.

“How much can I take off?” Ino asks.

“All of it,” Hinata pronounces.

Ino laughs. “Gonna shave it off, byakugan-hime?”

“Um! Maybe not all of it.”

Sakura smiles at her. “It’s going to be really cute.”

Travel. Strange lands. Haircuts and friendships. There are arrangements to be made, but looking at the two women in front of her, she thinks it would be worth it to do something for herself.

Sasuke wanders through the crowd, garnering plenty of curious stares and keeping an ear to the ground for what comes next. Every soldier will have to walk all the way back to whatever village sent them, pretty soon, and he’ll be walking to Konoha. The destination hardly matters if he’s walking by Naruto’s side, but it does help that Naruto has already vowed that this time they’ll create something new. After all, the Konoha of their childhood is already gone. Naruto doesn’t mind at all if it means they get to make the Konoha of their future. He also said something about building codes, but it didn’t seem relevant.

He’s distracted by a flash of pure white in the mix of grey and camouflage green. He seeks it out, curiosity piqued, but doesn’t end up having to go far. A child with pale skin and pure white hair takes hold of the fabric of his pants.

“Are you Sasuke?” she asks, in a melodious voice that holds an antique lilt. He nods. “I’m supposed to find you.”

She looks about eight years old, with sharp byakugan eyes. She’s dressed in a simple white jinbei set, with part of her hair twisted up in two buns atop her head, and bare feet of all things. A necklace consisting of three wooden beads adorns her neck, one red, one purple, and one grey. Sasuke looks at her and realizes what Kaguya meant with those last few words. She reaches for his hand and he gives it, curling two fingers around her palm. Kaguya was incorrect on one point—there was no one among them who didn’t deeply understand the hardships of her chosen path.

“It is the hardest thing I could ever do—"

“I’m going to grow up.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all there's one more epilogue chapter!  
> Hot takes of this chapter: Boruto and Sarada are theater kids. If you spend an entire series redeeming your murderous antagonists with talk no jutsu, you gotta carry that to the finish!! Sasuke should get to emote some because he is Healing. Found family is love, found family is life. If I'm not the hokage and you're not the hokage... who's flying the plane?!?!  
> Thank you so much for reading as always!  
> Next week: Local man says raising two children is too much, adopts ten.


	11. Setsubun

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> short but sweet!  
> it's first person for the aesthetic dont @ me

Today was Setsubun. For breakfast Sasuke toasted the mochi they only have on special days. He walked me to school like always, and we passed Genma-san and Raidou-san on the way, and Genma-san called me bunny-ears again. In class sensei was teaching us about butterflies. I didn’t know they used to be caterpillars. It’s weird because I know a lot of things and I’m really good at tests, but no one ever told me caterpillars turn into butterflies. I think Naruto would say it’s one of the ‘important life lessons’.

At lunch I had a bento Sasuke made me, and Himawari and Tsuya ate with me. I don’t think Tsuya is my friend, but she’s Himawari’s friend so I think we can become friends, eventually. Sakura said I have to try my best to make lots of friends, even though I’m fine with only having Himawari. It’s another of the important life lessons.

At recess sensei gave us bags of beans and did a genjutsu demonstration of an oni. We had to yell “out with the bad, in with the good,” and throw beans at it to make it disappear. I don’t like yelling or even talking that much but I said it as loud as I could. Sensei said we did a good job and went away. That’s when Komori started being mean. He got a bunch of boys to throw beans at me. He said it’s because I’m the real oni.

But Himawari is my best friend in the whole world, and she used her byakugan and caught every single bean! Then Tsuya started yelling at the boys, and I don’t know how yet but I really want to be her friend someday. I started crying even though I wasn’t sad and they took me to Sensei, and he said he would talk to the boys and I could have a sticker for being brave. He had ones for all the animals in the zodiac. I took the bunny because it’s what grown-up ninja call me sometimes, and it’s not because they’re calling me names, because it’s a nickname that shows that they care about me. I put it on my forehead like Sakura’s strength of a hundred, where my hitai-ate will go someday when I’m a great healer like her.

The rest of the day sensei talked about all the different countries in the world. I didn’t get any of the names right. That means I’m going to have to study which is boring. After class Naruto came to pick me and Himawari up. Himawari used to walk home on her own, but we like to walk with her. Himawari told Naruto about the boys and the beans and he got super mad, and he went to go talk to sensei about it. The next thing I knew Komori and his dad were in front of me apologizing. Sensei told us to shake hands so we did, but he looked at the red on my hands for a long time. I tried to hide them in my sleeves.

Naruto is always there to protect me when people try to call me names. People listen to him. He says we’re the same, I just have one more tail, and if I’m a demon he’s a demon. But he’s the brightest, sunniest person ever so that means neither of us are demons. Naruto and Himawari hold my hands and we swung our arms all the way to Himawari’s house. Then Naruto let me ride on his shoulders back to our house. I saw Genma-san and Raidou-san again and I waved. Genma-san yelled, “bunny-ears! Nandaime*!” and Naruto grumbled because people only call him that when they want something. They talked for a while about stuff in the armory, and Naruto made a clone to do shopping at the same time. Then we went home.

I don’t have a mom or a dad like most of the other kids do. One time I asked Sasuke if he was my father. He said no but poked me in the head and said that we’re family. Even though it’s just me and Sasuke that are supposed to live at home, lots of our family is here all the time. Naruto’s almost always here, and Sakura too. Ino comes with Sakura a lot because they’re girlfriend and girlfriend, but she also comes on her own sometimes. Sometimes she brings Inojin to see Sarada-nee and Boruto-nii, because they come here after school, and they stay over sometimes too. Himawari sleeps over a lot because her house is scary, and sometime soon she might stop going back at all.

At school they told us to draw a picture of our family, and I had to ask for an extra big paper. I drew Friday Night Dinner, because that’s when everyone is in one place. Sasuke and Ino cook lots and lots of fancy foods and Boruto-nii and Sarada-nee fight over the last kuraage and Chouchou-nee steals it from both of them, and Himawari makes pillow forts with me. Sakura tells us lots of stories about Team 7. Sometimes Tsunade-baa or Iruka-sensei or Kakashi-jiji come by, which is nice because they usually bring presents. After dinner Naruto reads us all a letter from Hinata, who I don’t remember but she’s Himawari’s family so that means she’s mine too. I don’t know what she looks like so I couldn’t really draw her, but that’s when Himawari decided we should just do ours together. I knew our picture was different. When we put it up on the wall with all the others anyone could see that. But it was also the biggest and the most colorful one, and I didn’t need anyone to tell me that this was a life lesson too.

Today when we came home Sakura and Sarada-nee were there, having iced tea after afternoon training. Sarada-nee was complaining again about the genin promotion age getting raised, even though they let her grade do special studies like her taijutsu training with Sakura. I don’t know why she minds since she likes studying so much. We sat at the kotatsu together and she braided my hair and told me how to crush rocks with your hands. I don’t think I’ll use it but I like listening.

Naruto made dinner and Sakura helped make sure he would make something other than ramen. It didn’t work, but she said homemade was acceptable if it was served with a vegetable side dish, which Sarada-nee made. Sasuke came home at five o’clock. Naruto kissed him on the nose because he’s silly and Sasuke called him usuratonkachi because he’s silly sometimes too. I still don’t really get why they’re not married. Iruka-sensei says Naruto’s too young to be marrying anybody, but that doesn’t make sense because Naruto’s a grown up and gown ups who are in love get married, right? It took a lot of research and observation to figure that out, and I’m pretty sure I’m right. But people are really confusing and I’ve accepted that sometimes they do things that make no sense. Like how Tsunade-baa keeps sending away all the best adults for ‘diplomatic envoys’ for days and days, which isn’t fair at all.

The ramen was tasty. Naruto made it shio because it’s my favorite even though he likes miso better, so I ate some of his vegetables for him when Sakura wasn’t looking. A ninja always repays a debt. After dinner Sakura took Sarada home and I did my homework. Naruto knows I can do math and listen at the same time, so he told me all about what was happening at the Hokage’s office today, but it’s state secrets so I can’t tell. Also it was pretty boring.

At bedtime Sasuke put his hand on my head and told me the story of Momotarou again. Naruto tells lots of adventure stories about him and his friends but Sasuke likes the old stories. Onigashima made me remember Komori, and everything he said. That made me think of everything mean people say, and it got stuck in my head. I know my family is special. I know Himawari thinks my hair is pretty, even if other kids call me a ghost sometimes. I know I never want to hurt anyone, and it’s a good thing that I can’t. But sometimes being different is lonely.

Tonight I asked Sasuke how we can be family if he’s not my father or my brother, or even a cousin like Himawari and Hinata. I never wanted to ask but my chest hurt and it all came spilling out.

He said, “We’re family because I choose you.”

I asked if that meant that someday he could unchoose me.

He said, “No. What makes us family is that I’ll always choose you, every single day.”

At first I didn’t believe him but then I did what Ino tells me to do when I’m upset and I flipped it on myself. I asked myself if I would ever not choose Sasuke, or Naruto and Sakura and Ino and Himawari and everyone I love. But I’m sure I’ll choose them every day from now until forever. And I understood. We’re different because we chose to be, because we chose each other. We’re different because we choose to love.

I told Sasuke I understood and he told me to have sweet dreams. I said I didn’t want any dreams at all, because then we could see each other again as soon as possible. He smiled in the darkness. I closed my eyes and breathed.

Out with the bad. In with the good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *nandaime is a pun on nanadaime that translates roughly to '?th'. People call him that because Naruto has already been the seventh Hokage in the public consciousness, but they haven't made it past the fifth, and he may yet be the sixth. 
> 
> THANK YOU for sticking with me for this story!!! I see each and every one of you!!! I really appreciate it when most of it was me being like this video at the author (https://www.tumblr.com/dashboard/blog/quiteliterallyhotsauce/175812356966) @kishimoto you're a slut your mom's a slut your cameraman's a slut your p.a.'s a slut. and your mic's a slut.  
> I hope this fic has been at least half as cathartic as it was for me. The nice thing about the Infinite Tsukuyomi excuse is that it's permanently post-canon--you couldn't break this continuity with a diamond jackhammer. Just try it, perriot. Everyone is gay married forever.
> 
> You might be able to tell that I am toying with the idea of a sequel where everything is good and nothing is bad. The world is wide open, and that's the point! Life doesn't end when you turn 18, or I'd be quite fucked. If found family antics is something you would be interested in reading, make some noise in the comments! And as always, you can catch me on tumblr at @flu-shot.
> 
> with love and excessive plot twists,  
> Roseus


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